Keep the Coffee Comimg

Last night it rained hard enough to be heard on the windows, but it didn’t rain long. Today is cloudy again. Rain is a possibility. It has been raining so much I swear my feet are webbing.

I have a couple of events on my dance card today. My teeth are getting cleaned, and I’m heading to Plymouth for a uke concert. We are playing for their Friday open streets. We’ll play an hour, take a break then play a second hour. We’re singing from our songs of the 70’s books. We have two of them.

When I was a kid, my mother made tuna salad for our Friday school lunches. The only other seafood she served was fish sticks for some Friday night dinners. She served them with French fries. I loved those fish sticks. I don’t know how old I was when I started to love steam clams. My mother would prepare them then she’d leave the room. She couldn’t watch us eat them. She found them disgusting. She loved shrimp, any shrimp dish. She liked lobster but only baked stuffed. My father would go quahogging, and my mother would make stuffed quahogs and freeze them. She’d surprise us with them. She made a fish casserole dish which was extraordinary. It had not only fish but also shrimp, of course it did. I still make that dish.

My father had a sweet tooth. He used to hide his candy under the couch. We all knew it, and we’d sometimes steal a few. My mother would buy him a large package of Hershey miniatures, and those he’d keep on the table close at hand when he watched TV. He always sat in the same spot on the couch next to the side table. On that table, his candy was in a small bowl, pewter I think, beside the lamp and an ashtray. He had a calendar on the table to keep track of special events or appointments. My dog Shauna used to sit in front of him or beside him on the couch. He always shared his goodies with her. He hid them from us, but he shared with her.