It was the late Sixties. I was a wife, which I had certainly never planned to be. My marriage, like so much of my life, just sorta happened while I was paying attention to More Important Stuff, like my dope habits and my weight gain or loss and the price of chicken at the supermarket. He was a student in the winter and worked construction in the summer and I was the one thing I had always sworn I would never be, a white trash housewife, with potential, a head fulla Big Thoughts and no idea of how to get there from here. Time passed as if I were watching a movie on an old black and white TV set. It certainly had very little to do with me.I can't figure out how long we lived in Sparks, more than one semester, less than two, I think. I kept hinting to Mom that I was miserable in my marriage and she kept telling me that all young couples had a hard time of it. Yeah, but do they try to murder one another? Years after this period of my life, I kept saying that Regan beat me, like I was a battered wife. But, the true fact of the matter is that I kept attacking him and he was about twice my size and would hit back.
In the time we lived in Sparks I broke a broom over his back, hit him up alongside the head with a hot cast iron skillet and ran over him with the car, knocking him head over tea kettle down the driveway and then backing up to see if he was OK. I didn't really want to kill him but I was so angry all the time. And, of course, at the time, neither of us were talking to anyone about the little homicidal episodes going on in our half of the duplex. I can't imagine why our neighbor never called the police. I mean, I could hear her fart and flush the toilet, I know our battles couldn't have been any big secret. Domestic violence is a silent crime, despite the noise and mess. Everyone tries to ignore it. Even we did.
But, I had never heard any woman say she periodically tried to dismember her husband, it just never came up in the conversation, you know? And poor Regan, his father was a paranoid schizophrenic, for real, who actually HAD tried to murder both son and wife on different occasions, so what the hell did he know about healthy boundaries? It wasn't 'til after I had been divorced for several years that it dawned on me that I had anger problems with men and it took me another decade to get clear on the fact that I was the perp, nine times out of ten, when I would end up rolling around on the floor with some dumb fucker, ripping his face off and spitting in the wounds.
I got fatter and fatter, again, too. My old high school buddy Chris was working at the loony bin and he and Havalock where still limping along in a pretend relationship. I would visit Havalock at her house. She was working full-time and pretty much supporting the household. Chris was doing amazing amounts of drugs and had discovered an all-protein quick weight loss diet that involved drinking gallons of water every day and all the lean meat and cottage cheese you could care to shovel into your face. Well, one loses one's taste for food with the metabolism jacked up on all protein, no carbs, and the true weight loss occurred, I believe, while running back and forth to the bathroom 400 times a day to piss back out the gallons of water.
My weight dropped from a firm 190 to 150 in about two months. Ditto Chris and Miss Miss as he had taken to calling Havalock. We weighed ourselves five, twelve, twenty-seven times a day and reported each ounce change in our weight via frantic phone calls. Miss Miss and I both saw that no matter what, every month, just before we started our periods, we would jump up five to seven pounds. The same thing would happen if we ate even a couple of regular meals, noodles, potatoes, even peas or salad. Up and down on the scale we went. It was crazy.
We fell over in stitches one Sunday afternoon when Chris said, "I have calculated our weight loss over the years carefully and am astonished to report that since 10th grade we have lost between us well over a ton." I just couldn't imagine how a person could gain seven pounds in one day, but the scales don't lie, do they? We got into an insane feast and fast cycle, dieting or not eating at all through the week so we could have fabulous dinner parties during the weekend. Regan had no sympathy; he ate constantly and stayed right at 175, a slender six foot Adonis, his hair growing steadily longer and curlier.
I went to work, a real straight job, as a line cook at an A&W Root Beer and hamburger shack out in Sparks, one of three A&W Drive-ins around the area owned by a greasy fellow named Dan. Dan looked like a hood and talked like hooker and toasted my cookies when he said I was too plain-looking (do you think he meant fat?) to be a car hop, and put me behind the line. We had Mama Burgers, Papa Burgers, Baby Burgers, Grandpa Burgers, God help us, everything except Aunt Rosie Burgers.
The car hops screamed their orders at me and I screamed them back as the patties hit the grill. "Baby burger, baby burger, mama, mama, mama burger, papa burger, papa burger and one fucking Grandpa on the grill," I sang out, little knowing a bunch of crazy kids on a TV program called Saturday Night Live in just a few years would reduce us all to hopeless hysterics doing endless re-runs of this same kind of scene. I was a good cook, fast, efficient, and prided myself on never making a mistake, not even with fifty patties sizzling away on the grill and a newbie gargling at me from the window, "Uh, Baby burger, double baby, double mama, Papa burger no cheese and uh, oh fuck, a grandpa I think."
"You fuck Grandpa," I would sing back at her, "Spit 'em out, littlest to the biggest, in order, they'll be coming right back at ya just the same as ya call 'em to me." I loved training in new help, an on-going battle as Dan had such a nasty mouth we lost about a car-hop a day and just kept a running ad in the Help Wanted section of the Nevada State Journal. "Clean help wanted. Apply at Dan's A&W," it said. "Clean help wanted, for foul-mouthed boss. Run while you can," is what it should have said. I earned $1.35 an hour and whatever tips the hops would split. The smart ones knew enough to take good care of the cooks.
It torked me sideways that Regan was earning $5.75 in the roofer's union every summer, time and a half after seven hours each day and double and a half for weekends. He earned as much in three months as I could pull in all year. "No fair," I said so often that one morning I woke up and there was a sign he had written on the ice box.
Resolved: It's NO FAIR
In Fact: It's a CIRCUS.
Get used to it, kiddo.
which, while funny, stung. Women all over Amerika and in several other areas of the world were beginning to get pissed and just one shift on the line would be enough to politicize the most content member of the home and motherhood cult. Being a wife was a major drag if you measure your worth by the value of your labor and it was not all that much better out there in the arena of the wage slave.
"You don't have to work!" Regan often stated. "But, I want some money of my own. I hate having to ask you for money every time I want to buy something. It's demeaning, worse than being a child," I told him. I got a separate bank account which soothed my ruffled feathers, somewhat. We fought about money a lot. As a cost-saving measure, we moved from our duplex in the sagebrush suburbs to a commune in a big old Victorian house in downtown Reno, above the river, in one of the oldest sections of town. It was a beautiful three-story house that had been a private home, a music school, law offices and now was being rented out as rooms by a couple of hippie capitalists.
There were about fifteen adult people living in our new abode. We had a small two-room suite downstairs in the back of the house with huge windows in one room that looked out over the raggedy garden. The bedroom was windowless and almost exactly the size of our bed. I painted the walls womb red and was quite content. We paid fifty bucks a month rent and had the use of the whole house. Our share of the power and phone bills came to less than five bucks a month which was a far cry from the $125.00 plus full utilities we paid out in Sparks. Plus, I had some human beings to talk to when Regan would descend into his gloom which happened more and more frequently. Also, being around other people forced us to check our violent impulses. We hissed and spit a lot but had far fewer fist-fights and breakage. It was good deal all around. I continued working at the Reno A&W, flipping those burgers, and wailing, "No Fair" every pay day.
Most of our housemates were students. Some of them had gotten Clean For Gene, others were somewhat more radical. Three fellows that lived up in the attic were full-blown politicos, ranting and raving about The War and The Establishment, and debating whether to work within the system or blow it all up. But, fuck, a slitty-eyed fellow named Nixon had been elected president and his secret strategy for getting out of Viet Nam turned out to be to sneak into Thailand and Cambodia and bomb the hell out of the Ho Chi Mien Trail. Regan and I were involved in all of the usual marches and Peace Demonstrations, and got smacked over the head and gassed and herded around like bleating sheep for our efforts and people were beginning to think that this protest business might mean being willing to lay your life on the line.
You may or may not recall that the National Guard shot kids dead at Kent State. We, who had been fucking around in the streets for several years already were far less shocked than Middle Amerika by this awful massacre. Kids had been shot at Jackson State and Berkeley, gassed and dragged through the streets all across the nation, simply disappeared and burned and hung down South for years, all of 'em hollering, "Wake up. We gotta make some changes around here." The usual response was to shoot the messenger. Or, gag 'em, arrest 'em, book 'em, Danno. As The Firesign Theater reminded us, "Those were ungroovy times." It is hard to remember today how horrible it was.
One of our flatmates was a rabid feminist with a severe heroin habit. She was forever flying into my face for coming home from work and cooking. I couldn't figure out how to explain to her that I liked cooking, that cooking was one of the few things left on Earth that I did enjoy, that I didn't want to stop cooking. "You've been brainwashed. Your head's been colonized by the Patriarchy," she ranted. Oh, great, now I have to worry about this. "You might as well be shitting out babies and scrubbing clothes by hand," she added.
"But, cooking," I attempted, "is one of the great gifts that women have brought to the world. We feed the people. It is the best thing about being a woman, our natural nurturing. Our bellies are like the ocean, you know, our breasts are capable of making rivers of milk, seas. To hold, to love, to feed, to provide for those who need, to watch the babies grow and learn. This is the meaning of life."
"Oh, fuck that retro anatomy-is-destiny bullshit. We have machines to do all that. Women need to break their chains and learn to carry guns. I don't want to listen to you mouth the Biological Imperative party line. That's crap. Out of the kitchen and into the streets," and she stomped off in her cute little combat boots. Myself, I didn't want to pack a gun. I thought men should try to be more like women, not the other way around. Men look at the wilderness and see a world to conquer, linear feet of lumber and kilowatts of potential electricity. I wanted them to see the soft belly of the valleys, the strong backside of the mountain ranges, to view our Mother as sacred, not a thing to be divided out and auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Feminist Stew with By Goddess Biscuits Cut that beef up slowly and carefully. She was probably a mother once, too. Drench the meat in flour and pepper and brown it in hot fat. Add enough flour to the pan to take up all the fat and let it brown slowly, stirring all the while, imagining the smell wafting out into the woods where all around would know that something wonderful is being cooked. Put this into a large soup-type pot with lots of water. Fill the hot frying pan with water and let that bubble up and get all the tasty sticky brown stuff off the sides of the pan and pour that into the pot with the meat and let this come up to a simmer. The more flour and fat ya snuck in there, the more flavor you're gonna have in your stew and the thicker it'll be and that's all there is to it. All the beef flavor cubes or instant bouillon in the world just ain't never gonna have the flavor of good red meat fried in hot grease and browned with lots of flour.
Let that simmer and keep on a stirring it while ya scrape some carrots and chop them up into bite-sized chunks. Slice up a bunch of celery, too, and some mushrooms. Shell out some peas while your at it, about a pound or two. Chunk up a peeled onion or two and some garlic, the more the merrier. Put all your vegetable scraps into a stock pot to cook for tomorrow's soup. Cube up a couple pounds of potatoes and put all those good vegetables into that stew after it has bubbled away for about an hour or so. Don't peel the potatoes, for crying out loud, that's where all the vitamins are. If your mama would kill ya for serving potatoes with the skins on or ya just gotta, well then, peel 'em but put the peels into the stock pot, too. They'll give a nice earthy flavor to your soup. While that stew is cooking up nicely, kidnap some child and teach 'em the Hinky Dinky Spider game. Someone has to be paying attention to our children, goddam it all. If your real nice to them, they might teach ya the little ditties they're learning on the playground. Here's a good one a little seven year old taught me.
Girls go to Mars and get more candy bars.
Boys go to Jupiter and just get stupider.
Jeez, some things just never change, I guess. Keep stirring that stew and while its finishing up, bake up a quick batch of biscuits. Start with about a half a cup of lard or Crisco or margarine, some kinda solid fat, and cut several cups of flour into that with a pastry cutter or a couple of forks 'til ya got it all mixed up into a mealy-looking mess. Toss in a hand full of sugar and a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of baking powder and scant half spoon of baking soda for every cuppa flour ya used and get that mixed up real good. Ask yourself exactly how many women's hands have done this down through the centuries if that's a comforting thought. I always like to think of the ancestors as unseen guides, just waiting for us to ask 'em for a little help here. Now ya gotta put some liquid in there and that's always by guess and by gosh. Water will do, stock is good, milk is even better and buttermilk is best of all and they're all gonna act different in there. Ya want enough liquid to make a stiff dough but not so dry it's still crumbly. Try around a cup and you'll learn over the years to increase or decrease as needed.
Knead that dough a couple of times to get it all pushed together but don't beat the hell out of it. Tender, flakey biscuits are the result of all those little pieces of dough coming together when ya roll this stuff out on a floured board. Be quick and gentle. The lighter a hand ya got, the lighter your biscuits'll be. Roll it out about an inch thick or a little thicker if ya like real tall biscuits. Ya can use an ordinary water glass or an empty tin can to cut your biscuits out on the board. The bigger the better, I believe. Arrange them on a baking sheet, an inch or so apart as they're gonna rise and get bigger. Bake in a pre-heated oven at about 400 degrees for about ten, fifteen, minutes, give or take; some like 'em browner and some not.
Ya serve that stew and those biscuits with some butter and some jam and I guarantee ya that people'll be hanging around your door all the time and ya probably won't ever need to pack a pistol to get your way. Everyone likes to eat, and that's a fact.
I don't think you can come out of a single parent family, watching your mother work like a mule to keep food in her kid's mouths and not be a feminist. I don't think ya can work for a buck thirty five an hour and watch your old man earn four times as much for work that's no harder and takes no more brains and not wonder what's the matter with this picture. I don't think ya could survive the Sexual Revolution of the '60's, seeing every protection that society had ever offered women torn away, even though we were the one's tossing off the shackles and racing to embrace a different way of being, without getting a little bent out of shape to realize you're still just a piece of meat, up for grabs. Women were getting mad as hell and marched in the cities, Take Back the Night their rallying cry, knowing the streets ain't safe for us sisters, and its gonna be up to us to change that.
I got so that the sight of a couple of men laughing over a Playboy magazine made me sick in my guts. I started saying I didn't believe in private property but I wasn't a communist or a socialist or any other kinda -ist, even a feminist if it meant stomping around and acting worse than any man. I didn't believe anyone ought to have any rights unless every one had rights. "No Fair!" got louder and louder and louder in my head 'til I ran around most the time just seeing red. I didn't like women, didn't like seeing 'em act like Barbie dolls, tricking themselves out to be prettier and sexier and more helpless than thou, but I didn't like to see women getting militant, either. Isn't there a third choice? I didn't like seeing men snicker about women they screwed or would like to screw or would have screwed if she hadn't wiggled away. I didn't like the anger I saw in men when women got uppity and said, "Go get yer own fucking beer." That kinda rage scared the shit out of me. I didn't like hearing men, and women, discount all the things that women do and I didn't like the feeling of not knowing what I would do to change it, to make the mess any better. I didn't make this mess, and I ain't gonna clean it up was my personal philosophy and I only liked those people who would admit that they were equally baffled by the whole mess.
Kat McElroy also wrote The Curse of Falling Off the Roof for Grrowl! Vol. 1 No. 4, and Les Sex, Les Hot! for Grrowl! Vol. 1 No. 8 -- both excerpts from The White Trash Cookbook.
