“I don’t like it”, I said, when Mom put something on the table. Most of the time, if I didn’t like the way a dish looked, I hated it immediately. When Grampa Jim over heard my complaint, he said,
“If you were hungry, you would eat rusty nails.”
I don’t think I have to interpret that one. Grampa Jim, Mom, and Dad too, all came from very poor families. They often went hungry for lack of food.
Mom served potatoes often, but Dad would not eat them. We asked him why? His reply was “I ate enough potatoes in the old country.”
He was sixteen when he left Hungary to come to America. That means his diet must have been all potatoes for siixteen years. What else could kill his appetite for more?
Filed under: Biography, Characters I knew, Conservative, economy, family, Garden, Grampa Jim, Memories, Warm and Fuzzy Tagged: | Diet, Hungarian, Hunger, poor, Potato, Rusty Nails
