The Pecan Park Eagle

Mama's Cheese Toast! Hmm, Hmm, Good!

Mama was a sweet, sweet lady from Kenedy, Texas who spent most of her childhood and adolescence growing up in the Houston Heights back in the 1920s and early 1930s. She loved telling strangers that she was a Harvard graduate – and everyone who did not grow up in the Heights was left in the dust to either drown in the sea of their own suspicions or else, swim on the ocean of their unfounded intellectual impression.

Mama was a sweet gal, but she was no rocket scientist. She just had her own uniquely loving way of looking at things. She liked to “air castle,” but her dreams never rose much higher than the desire to have a slightly bigger house someday – one with two bathrooms, instead of one – and maybe even three bedrooms instead of two. And maybe a “den” too – so that we didn’t have to do all our living in the living room.

Earlier in life, Mama had carried the first Reagan High School flag for the Redcoats drill team when the old Heights High School made the identity shift into the John H. Reagan High School Bulldogs. Aside from a little singing on the radio in Beeville, Texas, and somehow learning the lyrics to all the most popular songs of her day, Mama didn’t seem to carry around any grief over any unfulfilled life dreams. She had Dad. And she had us three kids. And that seemed to be enough.

Mom and Dad had met in Beeville because of the radio. Dad had heard Mom singing “Paper Moon” on the radio one day and drove over to the station to see the girl who was attached to the voice.  As an aspiring songwriter himself, at the time, Dad had been quite impressed with Mom’s musicality. And Dad was a pretty good musical judge. He and a buddy had written and published a song called “The Moon Is Here” that they drove all the way from Beeville to New York to try to get Rudy Vallee to sing it on one of his coast-to-coast broadcasts.

Well, they didn’t actually get to speak to Rudy Vallee on that trip to New York, nor did they actually ever really hear him sing the song on the air, but they left their music with his secretary. Later, someone who knew the two young songwriters supposedly told them that he heard Rudy Vallee sing their song on his show. That was also the end of Dad’s big musical dream. He never wrote another song. He spent my childhood years in Houston working as a welder and an auto parts department manager. Later he had operated his own appliance store and became pretty successful as an investor, but none of his work had anything to do with the arts. That door closed early and forever.

Mom and Dad married and eloped shortly after they met. They did so to escape religious opposition on both sides from Dad’s widowed Catholic mom and both of Mama’s parents, especially from my anti-Catholic maternal grandfather. The feelings on both sides apparently were more ceremonial than deep. Everybody got over it. And Mom and Dad were married 58 years before they died five weeks apart in 1994.

Everything I’m told today that I shouldn’t eat, I learned from Mama: Chicken Fried Steak, Potatoes and Gravy, Chicken and Dumplings, Macaroni and Cheese, Apple Pie, Peach Cobbler, Oatmeal with Sugar and Gobs of Butter, Cheeseburgers, Tacos and Tamales, and good old simple Cheese Toast – man, they were all part of Mama’s “Texas Mother Health Food Plan.”

“This food is good for you,” Mama used to say. “It’ll stick to your ribs.”

I grew up with this mental image of dumplings hanging off my ribs. By the time I reached an older age, I learned that this kind of food may have been OK when I was young enough to burn it off playing ball, but not forever. Sooner or later, this kind of food hangs from every vertical part of your body. And it clogs your arteries – even if it is delicious.

I don’t blame Mama. She thought she was helping us. And she was just part of a whole generation of  American mothers who taught us to eat the wrong things long before the fast food chains took on that role in our culture. And our city moms of the 1940s were simply feeding their kids in the ways of the farmer’s wife that they had learned from their rural mothers and grandmothers. It was the truest form of a multi-generational chain reaction.

Today I take numerous medications for Coronary Artery Disease and I still eat some of the old foods that I learned to enjoy at the dawn of my appetite. I just stay away from sugar, butter, salt (as much as possible), and fried foods (for as long as I can stand to be away). It isn’t easy.

I never learned to cook all that great, but I can fix a mean meal of mac and cheese – or good old-fashioned cheese toast. Here’s Mama’s recipe for cheese toast – a dish we often had back in the meatless Friday days we Catholics endured back in the days of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church. I must assume no liability for the consequences that may befall to any of you who use this recipe excessively:

Mama McCurdy’s Cheese Toast

(1) Grate up a cup or two of extra sharp cheddar cheese and pour the contents into a large serving bowl.

(2) Break an egg into the bowl and mix.

(3) Drop in a couple of table spoons of mustard and stir again.

(4) Sprinkle in a few dashes of Worcestershire Sauce and stir some more.

(5) Drop in a dash of milk to moisten the mixture.

(6) Add salt and pepper to suit your own needs for seasoning and stir one last time.

(7) Pour on two slices of bread that you’ve already toasted and placed on tinfoil in the toaster oven tray.

(8) Toast in oven until the cheese mixture  begins to bubble and turn brown.

(9) Remove. Place on plate, And eat. (For best results, use a knife and fork.)

(10) If you start to experience chest pains or the loss of feeling in your right arm, put down your fork and call 911.

Have a nice weekend, everybody!

JIMMY-JOLTING POSTSCRIPTS ~

 Jimmy Menutis Party, Featuring the Platters, Sept. 3rd: Don’t forget to contact Ruth Ann Menutis, asap, to make reservations for the big rock n roll birthday party in Lafayette, lA on Saturday, Sept. 3rd. Admission is free to fans, but only to those with reservations. Seating is limited.-  Contact Mrs. Menutis at  rmenutis@brandedworksinc.com at your earliest opportunity for party reservations and best hotel/motel rates

 Jimmy Wynn Book Signing Today, June 18th, 2-5 PM, Barnes & Noble, Pearland: Jimmy Wynn and I will be at the Barnes && Noble store in Pearland, TX, south of Houston, today to sign book purchases of “Toy Cannon” from the store. Come on out and meet Jimmy Wynn. You will enjoy every moment of your contact. The man is not only a Houston sports icon, but a terrific fan-friendly human being as well.