MAY 15, 2024 – (Cont.) Taking the place of the Schippers was Mrs. Gage, a widow of my grandparents’ vintage, and her son Dick.
I’ve forgotten what he did for a living, if I ever knew in the first place. What I remember, however, is that he wore a suit to work and always flashed a genuine smile when he drove his nice new dark red Buick Riviera up his driveway after work.
Mrs. Gage was a person who wore her age well. By her voice and face I could tell she was well into her 70s (which to me seemed old), but her ready smile, graceful gait, tasteful attire, and above all, her cordiality toward people of all ages, signaled that she was well-adjusted and fully reconciled to whatever regrets she might have had about her life. Her blue eyes were unusually sharp, projecting the same intelligence that filled her conservations.
Judging by her interactions with her two grandkids, Kelly, a year behind me in school, and his sister, two years ahead, I could see mutual affection between the young and the old. The two kids and their mom—Mrs. Gage’s daughter/Dick’s sister—visited soon after Mrs. Gage and Dick became our newest neighbors.
Kelly had been allowed to bring his bicycle, which was equipped with a battery-operated V-r-r-o-o-o-m!—a mock motorcycle engine attached to the frame. With the turn of a switch the toy engine emitted a loud whirring sound that upstaged by a long shot, half a deck of cards “played” by bicycle spokes. Kelly and I became instant friends when seeing me eye his short circuits up and down the street in front of our house, he stopped to ask if I wanted to give the V-r-r-o-o-o-m! a try. Between the two of us, we managed to kill sets of (brand new) batteries, generously provided by his grandmother. That’s when I brought out cards and clothespins. We attached so many to our bikes and created such noise, we soon forgot all about needing more batteries for the V-r-r-o-o-o-m! engine.
We became such good bike and baseball pals, I got invited down to his family’s fancy home with a sprawling solid green weedless lawn that sloped down to the shore of Lake Minnetonka. We found plenty to do just shy of getting ourselves in trouble.
Back in Anoka . . . Mrs. Gage became my parents’ trusted proxy for my younger sister and me when Mother and Dad were out of town at one of Dad’s work-related conferences. (Our older two sisters, I guess, were left to their own devices.) The plan was for Jenny and me to go straight to Mrs. Gage’s house—our old house—after school. We’d be able to hang out there until suppertime, when Mrs. Gage would feed us. We were to stay—and even get to watch some television—until our parents arrived home at around bedtime.
The plan was fine by us. The yard was big, and the rope swing in back was still in operation. Jenny and I were able to fill the time. By around six I was quite hungry, and when Mrs. Gage called us to dinner, the summons was none too soon. We rushed inside, where our kindly neighbor graciously invited us to sit down at the kitchen table for a “hot meal” she’d prepared, knowing that we “must be famished.” I affirmed vociferously and unwisely before I’d educated myself as to what the “hot meal” was, exactly.
Once Jenny and I were comfortably seated, Mrs. Gage put on a couple of mitts, reached into the oven, and drew out a large casserole dish. As she turned to place it on a trivet at the center of the table, I saw the contents. It was “goulash”—the very same “goulash” that occurred every two weeks at Franklin Elementary School. As I would later discover during my travels to Hungary, what school called “goulash” wasn’t anything close to the real thing. The school version—and unfortunately, Mrs. Gage’s identical recipe, apparently—was a bad combination of large elbow macaroni, ground round, and evidence of tomatoes. I could handle the meat and tomato-like vegetable matter, but I possessed a visceral disdain for large, slimy elbow macaroni. My dislike was so severe I’d nearly barf just thinking about the pasta touching my lips, let alone going all the way into my mouth.
Yet there I was, starving—and having said so emphatically—and staring at food that made me want to barf.
“I’ll dish you up a good-size portion to start with,” Mrs. Gage said kindly, “since you said you’re so hungry.”
Happily for me, not all was lost. Also on the table was a plate bearing four or five slices of white bread, along with a stick of butter. I deftly used well-buttered bread to counteract the negative attributes of the “goulash.” I envied Jenny for having been served a much smaller portion. She’d cleared her plate well before I could finish chasing the disgusting macaroni around mine. But Mrs. Gage was so kind, and she’d been so proud of her “goulash,” and I felt obliged at all cost—short of barfing outright—to demonstrate politeness and gratitude.
When I’d finally consumed the last of the offensive meal, I felt the same relief that perhaps an out-of-shape non-biker non-athlete feels after having completed a 50-mile charity ride in which the “team leader” at work “urged” everyone to participate. But my relief didn’t last more than a few seconds. To my horror, Mrs. Gage proceeded to dish out more.
“Well,” she said, “look how you cleaned that plate! You certainly were hungry! A growing boy like you needs more!”
I was afraid that a “No thanks” or “I’m sorry, but I’m full,” would reveal the truth—that I was plenty hungry but not for something that could easily trigger embarrassing and uncontrollable regurgitation—the same something in which Mrs. Gage had invested time, effort, and pride. But I didn’t hold it against her in the least. She was way too nice a person for me to harbor the slightest disappointment with her. Besides, the large chocolate sundae she served for dessert more than made up for the goulash.
A few short years passed, and Mrs. Gage grew older still. Dick switched jobs, and whether precipitated by that change or simply Mrs. Gage’s advancing age, she wound up moving to an apartment across the Rum River, just north of downtown Anoka. We’d see her there occasionally after Mother and Dad moved Grandpa up from Minneapolis to the same apartment building. She never lost her smile or the sparkle in her eyes. A good neighbor she’d been to us, and until she or Grandpa died—I forget who went first—she was a good neighbor to Grandpa. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
