When peach season came in August to central Indiana, the Tupperware that hadn’t been filled with strawberries came out of the cupboards and my father and I would spend endless hours getting brown in the sun, our hands dripping with juice, fuzzy peach skins piling up around us as we competed to see who could produce the longest continuous strip of peel.
As we worked, my mother sat on a chaise nearby, adorned in 1970s glory: a yellow flare-legged polyester pantsuit, massive white plastic sunglasses in the manner of Jackie O, and sandals I greatly admired, with cruel little straps between her toes, creating blisters in May that had healed by June and were impervious to the straps by August. My brother and his friends shot baskets on the driveway that my father tarred every summer, and my baby sister sat in her collapsible playpen, hurling her Fisher-Price people and her Roly Poly Chime Ball out onto the grass for us to fetch.
The strawberries and peaches were, of course, destined for the freezer, except for the few I stole on the sly. We weren’t allowed to eat anything fresh that could be frozen for winter. The freezer, a monstrous humming thing that lived in the basement, was the joy of my father’s money-saving life, because it welcomed with open arms all the food bought in frugal multiples throughout the year. It had come with the house when they purchased it in 1968, but my father assured me that it dated from 1949, and it is still going strong to this day.
Most of my memories of my father are summery, because he always preferred to be outside…cutting, sweeping, planting, gathering. Most memories of my father are entwined with food, and follow a pattern—intense frugality paired with rampant excess. Dad is passionate about a bargain, and it is from him that I’ve inherited my love of buying things in multiples. He never, ever bought just one can of tuna or green beans or corn, because the sale offer is six for a dollar. And why buy six when he could buy twelve, or eighteen, and really take advantage of the sale? We had plenty of room in our big old house, after all, to store any number of cans.
Given my father’s predilection for buying in bulk, seasonal gluts of fruit and vegetables, and thinking of things to do with them, were his passion. As I say this, I realize that in truth, spending precious free time with his family was his passion. It just expressed itself in tomatoes and cucumbers.
Dad in the Garden
by Kristen Frederickson
When peach season came in August to central Indiana, the Tupperware that hadn’t been filled with strawberries came out of the cupboards and my father and I would spend endless hours getting brown in the sun, our hands dripping with juice, fuzzy peach skins piling up around us as we competed to see who could produce the longest continuous strip of peel.
As we worked, my mother sat on a chaise nearby, adorned in 1970s glory: a yellow flare-legged polyester pantsuit, massive white plastic sunglasses in the manner of Jackie O, and sandals I greatly admired, with cruel little straps between her toes, creating blisters in May that had healed by June and were impervious to the straps by August. My brother and his friends shot baskets on the driveway that my father tarred every summer, and my baby sister sat in her collapsible playpen, hurling her Fisher-Price people and her Roly Poly Chime Ball out onto the grass for us to fetch.
The strawberries and peaches were, of course, destined for the freezer, except for the few I stole on the sly. We weren’t allowed to eat anything fresh that could be frozen for winter. The freezer, a monstrous humming thing that lived in the basement, was the joy of my father’s money-saving life, because it welcomed with open arms all the food bought in frugal multiples throughout the year. It had come with the house when they purchased it in 1968, but my father assured me that it dated from 1949, and it is still going strong to this day.
Most of my memories of my father are summery, because he always preferred to be outside…cutting, sweeping, planting, gathering. Most memories of my father are entwined with food, and follow a pattern—intense frugality paired with rampant excess. Dad is passionate about a bargain, and it is from him that I’ve inherited my love of buying things in multiples. He never, ever bought just one can of tuna or green beans or corn, because the sale offer is six for a dollar. And why buy six when he could buy twelve, or eighteen, and really take advantage of the sale? We had plenty of room in our big old house, after all, to store any number of cans.
Given my father’s predilection for buying in bulk, seasonal gluts of fruit and vegetables, and thinking of things to do with them, were his passion. As I say this, I realize that in truth, spending precious free time with his family was his passion. It just expressed itself in tomatoes and cucumbers.