Just Don’t Leave a Mess

by Bobbie Shafer of Troup, TX

I was raised in a house with my parents and right next door to my grandparents and their love and encouragement made me who I am today. I will admit that although I always tried to obey them and be a good girl, occasionally I failed miserably. Still with a fair amount of advice and punishment, I turned out okay.

Living in the country was an adventure within itself. My grandparents had a big old sprawling farm house and my parents and I lived in a small cottage next door. I loved exploring the great outdoors, the animals, pets, and I didn’t even object to chores.

During the weekends, days off from school, and in the summer, I fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, cleaned out the stalls in the barn, slopped the hogs, and often rode my horse out in the pastures to bring in the cattle for vet checks, or to bring in an expecting cow to wait for her time to deliver.

Daddy Joe, my grandfather, taught me to drive the tractor by the time I was twelve and I helped plow and mow. We all were involved in the planting, weeding, and harvesting of the vegetables from the gardens, and busy as that may seem, there were still times when I was bored.

My cousin, Beverly, spent a couple of months with us each summer. Her family lived in Houston and Beverly was one of seven children. Her mother was a single parent and worked five days a week from seven in the morning until seven in the evening. The two oldest girls were married, three in high school had summer jobs, but Beverly and her little brother spent the summer with relatives. Beverly stayed with us as she and I were the same age and Wade, her little brother, stayed with Uncle Gayle as he had three boys around Wade‘s age.

Boredom can be blamed as the culprit responsible for a lot of my unacceptable behavior. Once, I cut my thumb on the fan in an old meat cooler because I was hot and bored and wanted to cool off. I know I was not allowed to play with the stored cooler, and…well, that’s another story.

I wasn’t suppose to play in the corral or the field where the bull was located. I couldn’t play on any farm machinery or in the tool shed. I had to be supervisied in those places. I also couldn’t go down into the woods or to the stock pond alone.

This particular year was a little different from the others. This year Beverly wouldn’t be arriving until the middle of July as one of her married sisters wanted her to stay with her for awhile and help baby-sit her niece while her sister took a cooking class in the local community center.

I was a little disappointed mainly because Mother would allow me and Beverly to go to the pond and explore the woods as long as we stayed together, whereas she wouldn‘t let me go alone.

That was one rule that I completely understood. If I got hurt or for some reason needed help, I wouldn’t be able to get anyone if I were by myself. So, not going alone made sense. Still, I was often tempted, especially when everyone was busy doing something, everyone, that is, except me.

About once a year, Mother would clean out her kitchen cabinets, check the dates on all her cooking basics, throw out the old stuff, and make a list to replace them with new ones.

It was the middle of June, I had done all my morning chores, Beverly had not yet arrived, and I was bored. I cleaned my room, glory be, rearranged my desk and books, cleaned my windows and I was still bored.

I grabbed a biscuit from breakfast, jammed a couple of pieces of leftover bacon inside and sat at the kitchen table watching Mother separate the good cabinet items from the out-of-date ones. I held her chair as she washed down the shelves, put some new paper linings on them, handed her the jars, cans, and bottles she was putting back, and put the old containers in a small box that was going in the trash.

When everything was clean and orderly, and the old out-of-date bottles, cans, and jars were discarded in the to-be-thrown-away box, Mother wiped down the counter and started into the dining room to work on a dress she was sewing.

I stood for several minutes staring down in the box of unusual shaped containers of strange looking cooking stuff and sat down at the table. I took out each bottle and read the label.

There was old baking powder, baking soda, different spices, vanilla, flavorings, gravy additives, leaves of some kind, and a few bottles that had torn or faded labels.

I walked into the dining room and saw Mother, her mouth filled with straight pins, folding up the hem of a dress.

I asked if I could have the old stuff that she was going to throw away and if I could play with them. I wanted to experiment and pretend I was cooking.

She thought a few seconds and then nodded. Just as I turned to leave, she snatched the pins from between her pinched lips and said sternly, “You make sure you clean up that kitchen when you’re finished and just don’t leave a mess.”

I made a crossing motion over my heart and swore that she wouldn’t even know I’d been in the kitchen. She gave me a doubtful look, nodded again, and went back to her sewing.

I spent the next several hours pouring, mixing, measuring, stirring, swishing, coloring, and scooping. My grandmother called us to come over and have a lunch of ham sandwiches, sliced cantaloupe, and iced tea. Mother replied that we would be right over as soon as I cleaned up the kitchen and I began to do just that.

I wanted to save some of my pretty colored mixtures so I took some old mayonaise jars and relish jars from under the sink and filled them up, pulled up a chair, and sat them on the top shelf at the far end of the cabinet. That shelf was generally reserved for large bowls and platters that we rarely used except during holiday meals. I washed up the cups, spoons, and bowls I had used and made sure the kitchen was spotless. I didn’t like getting in trouble. It just made asking for future favors a little harder.

We went to Grandma’s for lunch and after lunch, we went out on the front porch and shelled peas. I helped shell until about two o’clock. Mother and Grandma shelled until Daddy came home from work and Daddy Joe came in from the fields. I went out into the front meadow with Rex, my collie, and played with him, picked blackberries and just fooled around until suppertime.

After supper, I listened to my favorite radio shows and went to bed. The next morning I drove into town with Daddy Joe and we went to the sale barn and looked at baby goats.

It was about four days from my kitchen experiment and it was suppertime. Daddy and I were playing pitch in the front yard and Grandma and Daddy Joe were coming over to eat with us. Mother had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and had baby green peas simmering.

When Daddy and I saw my grandparents walking over, we stopped throwing the ball and walked over to meet them. We were nearly to the house when a bloodcurdling scream blasted out the backdoor causing Daddy to dash into the house with Daddy Joe on his heels. Grandma and I weren’t far behind. When we entered the kitchen, I froze, my eyes big as saucers, a lump formed in my throat, and my stomach knotted up.

There, standing on a kitchen chair, at the end of the counter, with the cabinet door wide open, stood Mother. Her mouth was still open, but her eyes narrowed, and her boy-are-you-in-trouble eyebrow shot up when she saw me.

From the mouths of the jars holding my precious experiments oozed this greenish, grayish, bubbling mass of pulsating gunk that had crawled out of the jars, down the sides, and along the edge of the shelf. When it reached the divider, it continued down the inside of the cabinet to the second shelf where it snailed across that shelf and dripped down to the bottom shelf and began to puddle.

Daddy, Daddy Joe, and Grandma gawked at the Frankenstein-like-growth, followed Mother’s stare to me, and watched me turn ten shades of purple. I could feel the tears burning behind my eyelids, but I was determined not to cry. I pinched my lips together as Daddy helped Mother down from the chair. She took some mixing bowls to use for the peas and gravy and another for the mashed potatoes.

As they followed her into the dining room, she told them about the day she had cleaned out the kitchen cabinets and the experiments I made. Daddy and Daddy Joe started grinning and I could even see a smile twitching at the corners of Grandma’s mouth as Mother related her shock at the discovery of my mysterious concoction.

She told me to wash up for supper and that I could clean the mess up after we had eaten. All during the meal the grins and smiles teased my family’s faces. Mother had recovered from her shock and she, too, was laughing at the throbbing goo that had grown in the past few days. She and Grandma were trying to decidedwhich ingredients I had added that had caused the tremendous growth.

After supper dishes were washed, Mother and Grandma filled the sink with fresh hot water and took all the dishes and canned vegetables that had come in contact with my mixture down from the shelves. Daddy retrieved a wide paint scraper from the shed and an old bucket. I scooped up the mass that was smelling a little funny by that time, dumped it in the bucket while Mother and Grandma washed the special dishes and wiped the cans off. Once the experiment was in the bucket, I scrubbed down the shelves, replaced the shelf paper, and put everything back. Daddy Joe took the bucket and buried the contents in the side field. They weren’t worried about it harming any critter as it was all safe things from the kitchen, but it might make one of them sick.

Mother never really scolded me about it. She really didn’t have to. From that day forward when Mother said “Clean up that mess” or “don’t leave a mess,” I didn’t. I had been humiliated and embarrassed enough to last me a lifetime…or you might have thought so. I never left another mess like that again, but I can tell you other stories about some of my can’t-believe-I did-that episodes that embarrassed the pudding out of me again, but, those stories are for another time.