“Stood alone on a mountain top, starin’ out at the Great Divide. I could go east, I could go west, it was all up to me to decide…” Bob Seger
I left home at 18. Not willingly. Poverty evicted me. My parents couldn’t afford my enormous food intake. They had to choose…a new car or feeding their omnivorous son. The car won. So I left.
I didn’t really mind, except I hated to leave behind mama’s cinnamon toast. But life moves on. Anyway, the future winked at me when I graduated from high school. I winked back.
The future is a Siren. It seduces with promises of magic kingdoms, just waiting for us. Its allure packed more punch than my last fortune cookie, “See Rock City.”
I said my goodbyes. Mama sat grinning on the fender of her new 1964 gold, slantback Plymouth Savoy, delirious with joy over the car. Or my departure? She never said. I never asked.
I stood in our front yard, one foot on the driveway; the other on US Highway 27. It ran north and south. Across the street lay a dead-end dirt road to our farm. Three choices. I went north.
The Stone Age was slow to leave Southwest Georgia. It slipped out unseen in the dead of night the week before I left. We both knew it was time. It couldn’t compete with Elvis or hippies.
Food was responsible for my expulsion. Children consume vast quantities of it. My father was a righteous man but tight with his cash. He saved money by goading me into mowing the lawn and encouraged me to eat the grass for snacks. Promised it’d build muscles and attract girls. Skinny boys are dumb. They’ll believe anything that promises muscles or female attention.
But I hated anything green, except money, of course. Later I learned that’s what attracts female attention. If I got hungry, I had to find it or kill it. My parents were tyrants. “Feed yourself or starve,” they said. Claimed it builds character. Hogwash.
They were devout disciples of Dr. Spock. He warned them in a dream not to hug or kiss children. Said they’d never leave the nest, and like leeches, they would make old age a living hell. No, give ‘em sugar instead, said Spock.
I preferred sugar to kisses anyway. Familial affection abused me horribly as a child. I was mentally damaged, suffering from the dual stigma of being both seen with relatives and hugged by them. Aunt Doris once hugged me. Mothballs popped out of her pockets. Like a dog, I ate whatever fell to the floor. I now refrain. That day’s consequence remains vivid in memory.
As for kisses, OMG, their breath. It was a ghastly cross between snuff and coffee, as stale and stagnant as swamp water. But then again, who with any brain would touch a teenager who secreted musk more rank than that of a bull moose in rut?
Sugar is the quintessential staple in the diet of children. My mama had plenty of it. She dumped it on everything. Kool-Aid and ice tea were as thick as molasses. And always on cinnamon toast for breakfast. I mourn for it even now.
I used to watch her prep that delicacy. She’d slather slices of Wonder Bread (white, of course) with a tsunami of Oleo margarine. She’d shake fistfuls of freshly ground cinnamon on top and layer it with a pound of Dixie Crystal sugar. Just looking at it red-lined my glucose level and sent my stomach into orgiastic spasms.
Mama’s cinnamon toast was magic. In the oven the concoction boiled and bubbled. It emitted a heavenly aroma, the pure essence of Paradise. My mouth would drool profusely in anticipation of gnawing out the sweet bubbly middle of the toast.
I was a voracious snacker. Cheese toast, for example. Soda crackers toasted with cheese, topped with marshmallows. Bananas, peanut butter and honey. No apples…too mealy and mushy. Apple sauce? No problem.
There were mayonnaise sandwiches stuffed with pineapple, and light bread smeared with butter and sugar. I ate raw cookie dough, drank Ovaltine, devoured popsicles and occasionally squirrels. But nothing compared with cinnamon toast.
The crusts were the cast-offs of cinnamon toast. No kid ever ate them. Why remains an unsolved mystery. My mother tried, reminding me about starving Chinese children. Since I didn’t know any, my conscience was clear.
Some years later I discovered the Magic Kingdom promised by the Future is often more like a chimerical dream. It’s a mirage that shimmers in the distance, twinkling just out of reach. Unlike mama’s cinnamon toast, the center core of reality is not always sweet. Life has its own share of crusts.
So, here’s to mama’s cinnamon toast…thanks for the memories, and goodbye to the crusts.
Bud Hearn
May 12, 2017