by Joe Finnerty
I learned how to make grape jelly by observing as my mother made her one and only batch in 1935, a few days after my eighth birthday. She washed and boiled grapes in sugared water, then strained the contents through cheesecloth before pouring the liquid nectar into jars which she covered with a thin layer of paraffin and then set on a large rectangular tray to cool. She put the tray on a kitchen chair while cleaning up the stove and assorted pots. The tray extended past the edge of the chair by about six inches, I later concluded.
I learned how to make grape jelly by observing as my mother made her one and only batch in 1935, a few days after my eighth birthday. She washed and boiled grapes in sugared water, then strained the contents through cheesecloth before pouring the liquid nectar into jars which she covered with a thin layer of paraffin and then set on a large rectangular tray to cool. She put the tray on a kitchen chair while cleaning up the stove and assorted pots. The tray extended past the edge of the chair by about six inches, I later concluded.
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When the cooking lesson ended, I went to my bedroom and began playing with my rubber band gun. Every kid on my block had one. Made from orange crates, they fired cardboard projectiles with the flick of a thumb. I ran out of ammo and went back to the kitchen to cut up some more pieces. Unwittingly, I sat down on the kitchen chair now occupied by the jelly tray. As I fell to the floor, jar after jar flipped over my head, catapulted into space. In a flash, warm liquefied jelly covered me from head to toe.
My mother, normally a loving and kind hearted woman, yanked me up, spanked me, marched me back to my room and tossed me on the bed where I lay sobbing and sticky for many hours, long past dinnertime. After what seemed like an eternity, my big brother came into the room and tried to console me. Finally, I calmed down and stopped weeping.
“Are you hungry?’
“Yes,” I admitted.
"Would you like a jelly sandwich?"
The very thought of eating what I had been wearing for some two hours started me off on another hysterical outburst. To this day, the sight of grape jelly frequently brings this episode in my life to mind, the occasion of my only parental spanking.
Tell me the truth: Was I an abused kid, or what?
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