I just put my sourdough starter back on the refrigerator. It’s day two for the starter and just fed it for the second time. It is day thirteen for the lockdown. I’ve begun the starter because yeast has been one of the items that disappeared during the initial panic buying of last week, or two weeks ago now really. Sourdough is only one way to make bread rise. A tablespoon of baking soda and a tablespoon of vinegar works well. Buttermilk, lemon-lime soda, or a beer will also make dough rise. We are not in panic mode here, rather we are just using the skills we learned from parents who lived through the depression and World War II.

My dad was not a personable man, at least to me. He was a stoic and I rarely saw him smile. The last of eleven children, my father’s oldest brother was nearly 30 years older. His mother died when he was four and he grew up with an elderly, carpenter, father, a man I only knew as the old man who lived with my Aunt Ruby. Grandpa Beebe rarely spoke, had a huge, permanent bump on his forehead, which I later learned was a kind of cyst caused by a piece of wood hitting him in the head while he was chopping firewood, and smoked. In later years I remember him drinking a glass of whiskey daily, prescribed by his doctor. I don’t remember the reason behind the prescription; I only know my mom sent me over with a thermos of soup, or a wrapped sandwich or two for him because he would forget to eat, but not forget to drink the whiskey. At any rate, my father grew up with this man in depression era Kansas. He went to work at an early age. I recall him telling his brother once about working in a restaurant where his job was to doctor the hamburger meat with breadcrumbs so that the burgers they served were only 70% meat. He lied about his age and went to war when he was sixteen. He was a male nurse, working in West Coast military hospitals. He was called back to the service just after I was born and was stationed on Adak, in the Aleutians for two years.

These experiences made my father a frugal, unemotional, but self-sufficient man. He was surprisingly a Democrat because Roosevelt was a Democrat. He worked n rotating shifts, cooked when he was home during the day, ironed his own uniforms, polished his boots with a spit shine to a mirror sheen. He cooked chili often and put sugar into his serving, cooked beans and ham, and, just like his time in the navy, had them for supper one day and breakfast the next. He made creamed chipped beef on toast, or biscuits and gravy. It was all cheap, hearty, depression era food. (Which reminds me that it seems to me that the distinctive food of any culture is the food that the poor eat daily.) He became a police officer after Korea, and it was this man that I in turn grew up with.

We didn’t throw things out. We used them until they were gone. Sandwich bread was toast, hotdog bun, and bread-pudding. When they got too worn, jeans became shorts for summer, and then cut up rags for cleaning and car washing, until only small squares were left which were used for polishing boots and my mother’s shoes (my job). Empty bleach bottles became water jugs for picnics and dry camping. Clothes were hung out on the line rather than dried in the drier until it became too cold and they froze rather than dried. It all sounds like the life of a hundred years ago, and it nearly is. Intentionally or not, his ways became my ways.

So, we make do for now. I make bread, keep bacon grease in a jar in the fridge, make soup from old bones, or last bits of a roast. It’s not fancy. It’s a comfortable, homey way to be. We stay home, read, listen to music, and eat well. We will see this time past us.

 

Blessings

Unwanted Travels