This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “proverb”.

“A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other. ”

Several evenings ago, there was a family dinner at my in-law’s house. My wife and I attended, along with my wife’s younger brother, his wife and two daughters, ages… um… somewhere between four and eight… or something close to that. Also on the guest list were my wife’s cousin, her husband and two young sons, both in the approximate age range of my nieces. My thirty-year-old niece was there too, but since she is relatively well-behaved and doesn’t fit into the “child” category anymore, she will merit merely this mention in the story.

Dinner proceeded like most dinners, with cross-table conversation punctuated by clinking glasses, rattling flatware and my father-in-law rolling his eyes in exasperation and saying, “I can’t hear you.” As usual, the children picked, uninterested, at their meals and bolted from the table early while the adults lingered over their plates. My eldest niece (hmmm! Two mentions!) stealthily began the preliminary clearing of the table to ready it for dessert. The living room, adjacent to the dining room, came alive with the unruly loudness of four rambunctious young cousins. The noise settled slightly after a visit by one of the parents — impatiently prompted by my father-in-law. Still, the muffled sounds of children’s voices could be heard, though no actual words could be discerned.

The hushed tones from the living room, it would soon be revealed, was my niece (not the thirty-year old. Jeez! Three mentions!) recounting the legend of Bloody Mary for the benefit of her cousin. The tale of Bloody Mary, for those who never attended camp, never attended a public school or was never a kid surrounded by other kids, is a word-of-mouth ghost story. Although it has various origins and numerous colloquial nuances, the basic story remains. The evil spirit of a woman of undetermined background can be invoked by facing a mirror in a darkened room (usually the claustrophobic confines of a bathroom) and reciting her name — “Bloody Mary” — a specific number of times (anywhere from three to a hundred, depending on whose giving the instructions). My niece, at eight years of age, is a voracious reader, an avid TV and movie junkie and, just like her father at that age, a budding horror fan. Unfortunately, most children are scared shitless by things of that nature, and much to her delight, her slightly older yet very impressionable boy cousin was no exception. And judging by the sly smile spread across her lips, she knew that would be the result.

As the evening wound down, my wife’s cousin rounded up her family and, as all good mothers are prone to do, insisted that her children visit the bathroom before the long drive home. Her older boy, the recently spooked one, reacted as though he was just asked to ingest a healthy serving of cockroach and broccoli casserole. His eyes widened in terror and his feet remained firmly planted as his mother directed him towards the small powder room just off the dining room. “No!,” he shrieked, his face growing flush, then pale. His parents exchanged bewildered glances. The poor boy shook with real fear as he protested any persuasion to get him to enter that bathroom. My mother-in-law, my father-in-law, his mother and his father (okay, maybe not  his father so much) tried to reason with the terrified child, as his younger brother danced with indifferent joy, revelling in the fact that the journey home was being temporarily delayed. “There’s nothing to be afraid of!,” his mother said, “It’s just a bathroom.” My father-in-law suggested they take advantage of the bathroom on the second floor. That was just as bad, because obviously to the frightened boy, Bloody Mary’s portal to the world of the living was any  bathroom and he wanted no parts of any of them. He continued his ear-splitting screams until my niece sheepishly admitted that she may have  inadvertently mentioned  part of a story that may have implied  that an evil, child-grabbing ghost lived inside all mirrors. Bringing it out in the open didn’t help. That kid was not going into the bathroom. He screamed louder, pleading to be taken home “right this instance”, as he put it. Finally, my mother-in-law took the frantic boy aside and leaned over to present her proposal face to face. With his full attention, my mother-in-law produced a large and shiny silver dollar from her pocket. She explained that if he entered the bathroom and completed the task that customarily takes place in a bathroom, this silver minted beauty would be his. He briefly considered, turned on his heels and while unbuttoning his pants, slammed the bathroom door behind him. One tinkle later, he emerged to collect his reward.

Money trumps everything. Even ghosts.

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When you’re a kid, dessert is always the best part of a meal. Who doesn’t love to find a package of Yodels in their lunch at school or have dinner followed by a chilled bowl of Jello or a slice of the cake you hungrily watched Mom bake and frost that afternoon? When I was younger, there was no better dessert than ice cream at Greenwood Dairies. Maybe what made it so great was the ritual involved in a visit to the Bucks County, Pennsylvania landmark.

My mother had three brothers. They were three bad-ass youths who lived briefly in rural Oklahoma before settling in Philadelphia with their immigrant parents. (Actually, the family was asked to leave after the three brothers burned down a barn.) There was gravelly-voiced Abe, who resembled Manny from The Pep Boys, but with a pipe instead of a cigar. There was boisterous and barrel-chested Nat – burly, animated and childlike. He was a magnet at family gatherings, with nieces and nephews lining up to be the next one tossed in the air and caught in Uncle Nat’s huge protective hands. My mother’s oldest brother was Sam. Sam was a wonderfully balanced combination of gruff and sweetness, not unlike Ed Asner’s portrayal of Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Even though Sam was eighteen years older than my mom, he was warm and friendly and since he and my Aunt Dorothy had no children of their own, he felt a special bond with those of this little sister. My mother loved and felt closest to her brother Sam and he was the only one of my mom’s siblings that my father could stomach.

Several times during the summer, Uncle Sam and his wife, Aunt Dorothy – a lovely and genial amalgam of Katherine Hepburn and Carol Channing – would drive from their tiny and cluttered apartment on the second floor of Sam’s rare book store to our cookie-cutter neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia. My brother and I loved visits from Sam and Dorothy. They’d pull up into our driveway in a shiny new car, usually twice the size of my father’s current vehicle. My brother and I would run out to the front lawn and watch as Sam ambled around to the open the car door for his wife in the most gentlemanly fashion. Sam and Dorothy would sit on the sofa in our living room and have the “catching-up-with-family” conversation with my mom while my dad stood at the front door and smoked one cigarette after another. My brother and I would play at their feet on the turquoise carpet, occasionally interjecting into the conversation. But we were actually just biding our time until we heard the announcement we anticipated. The announcement that capped every visit from Sam and Dorothy. “Do the boys want to go to Greenwood Dairies for ice cream?,” Aunt Dorothy would covertly whisper to my mother. Oh, damn straight we do! What took you so long to ask? was the look that swept across my face. By the expression on my brother’s face, the sentiment was the same.

Greenwood Dairies was a twenty minute drive up Route One in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Aside from stuffing ourselves with creamy summertime treats, my family’s only other reason to make the trek to Langhorne was to trade in one of our two current automobiles for a new used one at Reedman’s, a sprawling car dealership where everyone in Northeast Philadelphia bought their new used cars. My brother and I (mostly me) fidgeted in the back seat of Sam and Dorothy’s car until we recognized the crunch of gravel under the tires alerting us that we had pulled into Greenwood Dairies’ parking lot. Greenwood Dairies was a large, odd-shaped structure made odder by years of additions to the original building. The spacious eating area was crammed with green and cream-colored vinyl booths around the perimeter and chrome-trimmed tables with matching chairs upholstered with the same green and cream vinyl. A massive gold-flecked Formica counter snaked through the dining room equipped with stools whose metallic green cushions spun when given a good flick of the wrist. We bounded through the doors and waited with Aunt Dorothy for a table in the bustling seating area. As my brother and I occupied ourselves by spinning the aforementioned stools, Uncle Sam made a beeline for the retail store on the far side of the restaurant to buy a bag of Rold Gold pretzels. Sam couldn’t eat ice cream if it wasn’t accompanied by pretzels. They were like another utensil to compliment his spoon.

Once seated, Aunt Dorothy would shiver and express her dislike for how low they kept the thermostat. Despite wearing a sweater draped over her spindly shoulders, a single opalescent button clasped at her throat, she still hunched over trying to generate warmth. Her gray hair was pulled impossibly tight to the back of her head where it all met in a thick bun tamed by two wooden sticks and a network of bobby pins. As she bent forward to read the plastic-covered menu, her bun bobbed atop her head silently surveying the room. Reading the menu was only a formality, as we always ordered the same thing. Sam would order several scoops of various flavors of ice cream topped with whipped cream and jimmies*. Dorothy would order a fruit-flavored ice cream, usually peach or cherry vanilla. My brother would get two scoops of vanilla or, if he was feeling adventurous, vanilla fudge. I’d get the “Clowny Sundae”, an inverted ice cream cone on a plate with a cake-frosting face decorating the scoop, the pointed cone mimicking a clown hat. Dorothy would also request that the waiter bring two small gravy boats – one filled with marshmallow sauce and the other with hot fudge – each to be added to our desserts at our liking. Once our orders were placed and the waiter scurried off to the preparation area, Sam would pretend call the waiter back to change his order. “Instead,”, he’d announce, “I think I’ll get a Pig’s Dinner!”  The Greenwood Dairies “Pig’s Dinner,” if the memories of a seven-year-old serve me correctly, was a mountain of four thousand scoops of every ice cream flavor the dairy offered, blanketed in fudge and strawberries, slathered in marshmallow and butterscotch sauces, dusted in nuts, fortified with fifty-seven sliced bananas and crowned with enormous, fluffy clouds of whipped cream and a single cherry. (Perhaps I have gotten some of the quantities wrong, but you get my point.)  Every time we went to Greenwood Dairies, invariably one brave diner would order the Pig’s Dinner.  The staff would ring bells and blow whistles and make a general fuss. When the frozen concoction made its arrival to the patron’s table, it did so perched majestically upon a wood stretcher transported by two paper-hatted and aproned teens. They presented the customer with a single spoon and, amid thunderous applause, he would dig in! My brother and I marveled at Uncle Sam. Would this be the actual time he would actually order it? Of course, my Uncle Sam never ordered the Pig’s Dinner, but he feigned the threat on every subsequent visit.

When my brother and I got older and preferred the company of our friends to that of our extended family and the taste of cheese fries and beer overtook the appeal of a Clowny Sundae, the visits to Greenwood Dairies stopped. Soon, we settled for the offering of close-by ice cream chains like Friendly’s, rather travelling the extra distance to Langhorne. Sam and Dorothy continued their regular visits into my teens until my early twenties when I got married and moved out of my parent’s house. By that time Greenwood Dairies had permanently closed its doors. The quirky maze of buildings was razed and Reedman’s expanded their dealership into the newly available grounds. Although many claims have been made by friend’s brothers and neighbor’s cousins, I still don’t know anyone who ever conquered the Pig’s Dinner.

(* In the Philadelphia area, we call “jimmies” what most everyone else calls “sprinkles”, except in England where they are called “hundreds and thousands” and in the Netherlands where they are called “hagelslag” although they are primarily used as a sandwich topping.)

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