Long-ago treats would make today’s kids choke
MIDDLEBURGH — Wow! Just 30 more days till Christmas. Twenty years ago, that would have been plenty of time, but today they start touting Christmas while the leaves on the trees are still green. This OF thinks it is to remind people of the color of money and the stores want it.
On Nov. 25, Mrs. K’s Kitchen wafted the morning breakfast aroma out through the valley and into the hills, and like a well-trained coon hound the OMOTM picked up on this and sniffed their way to the source.
Once there, the OFs began to cover the events to them that mattered over the last week. Strange how not much of it was current events, but what the OFs had or did in the smoky memory of the past.
This covered everything from food, to, of course, cars. There was considerable time jumping on what Mom used to cook, and what is considered food today. One or the other, the pallet has changed or the memory.
Memory of black-strap molasses with a little sugar on bread as a snack or dessert, or homemade butter on toast with a little sugar for the same thing. The OFs thought that, if we offered that to a kid today, the kid would choke on it.
Hesitant on hybrids
A current event was a couple of OFs discussing, what else, vehicles older versus new. Apparently this was not necessarily all about the new engine-powered covered wagons, but the rushing of technology before it had been well tested and ready for production to the masses.
Strange, this scribe has heard from a couple others involving the hybrids. After a little while of running them, they begin to have problems. The scribe thought that it was just one or two vehicles, but then the OMOTM started complaining about the same type of problem.
Maybe this type of vehicle should go back to the drawing board before the whole concept is soured and nobody wants them. Lecture for the day.
Luck changes
As has become a tradition, an OF (Frank Dees) supplies a turkey to be raffled off the gathering before Thanksgiving. The breakfast of Nov 25 was no different. The raffle was held and an erstwhile OF won.
The names were drawn from a shopping bag by a waitress, and included in the raffle were a few of the regular patrons of the restaurant. As an aside here, all the patrons, and of course the OMOTM were guys, old guys, the only ladies this scribe could see were Angela, Carol, out front, and Patty in the kitchen.
Three ladies taking care of 42 basically OFs. The scribe thinks: Ask three guys to do the same thing and they would b---- the whole time.
The erstwhile OF who won the turkey mentioned that he never wins anything; well, today his luck was changed by the OFs. And he is now taking charge of a frozen, dead bird.
Rising prices
A couple of OFs who are true farmers, and still active in the profession, were in a discussion at the end of the long table and one could tell it was not retro but current, very current, and it appeared to be on prices and how fast they are increasing.
If this scribe was able to discern any of the conversation, it would be that one of the products they have to purchase to remain in business rose 30 percent between deliveries. Does not seem right.
The smell of bacon frying in a pan with eggs, and pancakes, home fries, sausage, or hash on the side, maybe even the whole kit and caboodle, would lure anybody, not only the OMOTM, to Mrs. K’s Kitchen in Middleburgh but the OMOTM who did follow their noses were: Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Ed Goff, Frank Fuss, Joe Rack, Mark Traver, Glenn Patterson, Roger Shafer, Rich Albertin, Randy Barber, Robert Schanz, Pastor Jay Francis, Jamey Darrah, Al Schager, Russ Pokorny, Chuck Batcher, Warren Willsey, Frank Dees, John Jazz, Gerry Cross, Jack Norray, Dick Dexter, David L. Wood, Henry Whipple, Dave Hodgetts, Elwood Vanderbilt, Bob Donnelly, Allan DeFazio, John Dap, Paul Guiton, and me.