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The Chipped Beef Wars
Like the sailors, our family ate chipped beef for
breakfast. The strange meal came into my life when I was four years old.
I found delectable the buttery white sauce infused with the smoky flavor
of the corned beef and the acrid tang of the boiled eggs, failing to
balk at the sight of purple and yellow specs floating in the grayish
paste. In contrast, my brother Chris was appalled. If a meal wasn’t
comprised of meat, sandwiches, and potatoes, he turned up his nose and
went hungry. At the sight of “stuff,” his term for chipped beef, he
ever grimaced and expressed his incredulity that anyone could possibly
eat it.
One morning seven years later, without warning, a
strange wind blew upon Chris. He came to the table where the chipped
beef and toast lay ready for consumption. Rather than scoff and head for
the cabinet to fetch a propitiatory bowl of cereal, he got it in his
mind to try it. I watched, stunned, slack-jawed. Who was the kid in our
kitchen who looked like Chris, but failed to grimace and make his
obligatory statements about the repulsiveness of our breakfast? Toast on
plate, he spooned a dollop of chipped beef onto it and took a bite. As
if he had lit a firecracker fuse, I cringed, waiting for a plethora of
denouncements to descend, but contrary to all expectation, he liked it.
No, that isn’t quite right. He didn’t like it; he loved it.
He adored it. He worshipped it.
Something came over Chris, perhaps some primal
realization that he had denied himself chipped beef for all those years
for no good reason. This newfound affinity for something once hated
catapulted him into personal crisis. Not only did Chris start looking
forward to chipped beef as Michelle and I did, he became officious in
his attention to it, insisting that Michelle and I eat it correctly,
applying the exact correct ratio of sauce to toast. Applying too much
sauce, thus casting the chipped beef universe into chaos, would result
in the chipped beef chief of police castigating you for your
malfeasance.
“That’s too much chipped beef,” he’d charge,
aiming a dirty look in your direction and taking control of the ladle
himself. Indeed, one day he declared martial law and no longer allowed
anyone to touch the ladle, appointing himself the keeper of the sauce,
dispatching meager portions by his own hand, putting on such a slight
amount that a thin film of margarine would have added more flavor. In
the end, a whole loaf of bread would be consumed in comparison to about
two cups of sauce. This police state elicited a growing frustration from
Michelle and me so that anytime chipped beef was served; Mom ended up
interceding to stop a war of words before it erupted into physical
violence. Finally, she’d had enough.
“That’s it!” she fumed, spinning on her ankles at
the kitchen sink, the fire in her eye capable of making a snake cringe
in terror. “No more chipped beef for any of you! I don’t care if you
starve to death; I will never fix this again! I refuse to make you
breakfast any more. You can eat cold cereal!”
Her tirade complete, Mom removed the pot and ladle from
the table and took it to the sink where she washed the remaining sauce
down the sink, tossing scattered angry words over her shoulder in our
direction. “You’ll eat cold cereal!”
The thought of eating cold cereal didn’t bother me as
much as the thought that we might never have chipped beef again. In
time, we got hot breakfasts again, but it was half a year before Mom
relented and fixed a moderate amount of chipped beef. We came to the
table that morning amid stern warnings about cold cereal and going
hungry. We promised not to fight about breakfast, and agreed to allow
Mom to be the keeper of the ladle. But that wasn’t the end of talk
about chipped beef. The Chipped Beef Wars went down in history, became
legendary, often emerging as tales of woe exemplifying how difficult
parenting can be, casting Chris, Michelle, and me into shame and
chagrin, and all because Chris had decided for once in his life to try a
new dish.
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