We did not eat breakfast on the run when I was growing up in Charlotte in the 1950s. We ate breakfast together, the four of us, Dad, Mother, Brother Dave and me. [The other five children were grown and gone.] Supper, too.
Dad remarried in 1949, when I was six years old, a widow from Cullman, Alabama, who had no children. Her name was Vergie Winn Gunn. Her first husband was a farmer. She told me he was hitching a horse to a wagon when the horse kicked him in the head. Killed him. Anyway, back to the story…
At breakfast my second mother would put a paper napkin and glass of water beside each plate. Usually she cooked eggs, bacon or sausage, grits, toast or, sometimes, made-from-scratch biscuits. Preserves were on the table. A small glass of orange juice, too. And coffee or hot chocolate.
She was a good cook and she set a nice table.
On this particular morning she served Dave and me hot, homemade biscuits. I didn’t realize what day it was until I took a bite — into a cotton ball she had cook inside the biscuit.
“April Fool!” she said.
NOTE: Viking, Iceman, Nine! and I lost the John Muir Trail lottery. For 42 consecutive days I got an email saying “DENIED.” So we won’t be hiking the JMT this summer. But Viking and I and, maybe, Iceman are going to hike a 103-mile section of the A.T. in Virginia in May. And next year, the JMT! I live in hope.
Coming Monday: No [Black] Girls Allowed
