AUGUST 10 2021 – Yesterday my sisters and I gathered for one more long visit together before dispersing to our respective “corners.” The last time we’d assembled like this was a full four years ago.
With my wife and a brother-in-law as patient observers, my sisters and I sat on the veranda of the place we’ve known all our lives but so rarely visited together; the paradise handed down by our ancestors, generation by generation; the Shangri-La that we, now, must steward lovingly before the hand-off to the next generation. The issues are many; the labor, unending; the costs, a bottomless pit; but our commitment? It’s as deep as our familial loyalties and sense of duty; as enduring as our appreciation of the beauty that surrounds us.
While nature painted on her canvas around us, what did we stewards of the property talk about?
Hostess Twinkies, of course!
Now, a day later, I can’t remember what sparked the conversation. This is often the case with the recounting of an amusing exchange—not until the original story unfolds a bit does the listener apprehend that it’s a doozy and begin to absorb the details. Having been less attentive at the outset, the listener hears and remembers fewer particulars of the prologue.
The point of Elsa’s story that grabbed my attention was a family situation of which I had no memory. “My dislike of Twinkies,” she said, “goes back to when we were kids and everyone in the family except me was royally sick, as in throwing-up sick. I was the only one who hadn’t caught whatever bug all you guys had. I was hungry and the only thing I could find to eat was a package of Twinkies. At the time, I loved Twinkies . . .”
At this point in the story, another sister interjected the memory that very early in our elementary school careers, we were left to make our own lunches, consisting mostly of sandwiches made of white bread and baloney or peanut and jelly. Our lunch boxes/bags did include, however, our mother’s contribution of an orange and a package of Twinkies. “Only the Twinkies had trading value,” Jenny said.
Elsa continued. “I gobbled up the Twinkies, and sure enough, not much later, I was throwing up too.
“I never wanted another Hostess Twinkie after that.”
Now it comes back to me: what precipitated Elsa’s story was her mention of another package of Hostess Twinkies, which, to her knowledge remains undisturbed upon a shelf backstage behind the bass section of Orchestra Hall (Minneapolis). “For years. . .” she said, “a package of Twinkies was sitting untouched on a shelf back-stage of Orchestra Hall [in Minneapolis]. I wonder if it’s still there.”
The Twinkie stories led to a lively exchange about lunchroom rituals at Franklin Elementary back in our hometown of Anoka, Minnesota.
You can take the Nilsson sibs out of the Halloween Capital of the World, but you can’t take the Halloween Capital of the World out of the Nilsson sibs.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
