The Coral Gables Times

Don’t Worry, Darling

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WHITNEY DARROW, JR. Housewives, meet a great househusband. His wife has nothing to fear when she leaves him in charge BY ALBERT BROWN AS SHE KISSED ME and the boys good-bye, Mary handed me a fat sheaf of notes and said, “I’ve written everything down for you, dear. Just follow instructions and you won’t have a bit of trouble. Remember to wear your old slacks when you clean the house, and do not smoke in bed.” I’ll never forget the unhinged feeling that came over me that day. Earlier, Mary had said, “I must leave for Salt Lake City tonight, dear. Mother has had a turn for the worse, and my brother is in Europe.” She had been unable to locate any baby sitter, friend, or cleaning woman to manage me and our three young terrors during her absence. So she had announced, with visible trepidation, that she would have to put me in charge of everything. During the 10 years of our married life, I had developed a feeling of revulsion, born of inexperience and general ineptitude, toward washing machines, frozen foods, supermarket carts, and other modern “conveniences” that our wives handle with the precision and aplomb of jet pilots. Once when I tried to help Mary detach the washing machine, she called me a “manual moron.” On page one of Mary’s instructions and admonitions, she made it clear that the most important of my many new duties was to give my charges “three good meals a day.” I toyed with the idea of making a deal with Louis’ Catering Service. I could see its shiny truck pulling up in front of our house three times a day with heated stainless steel carriers full of the delicious meals I had ordered. But I abandoned this tempting notion as soon as I read the section of Mary’s instructions under the heading: “Your Budget.” Still, I embarked on my cookery stint with a certain elan. Here was one phase of my job for which previous experience well fitted me. For six years—ever since Mary gave me a floppy chef’s hat and a long white apron with funny sayings printed in red—I had been the acknowledged Barbecue Boss of the house. My charcoal-grilled steaks, marinated in a secret sauce blended of French dressing and peanut butter, enjoyed a substantial reputation. Dinner the first night after Mary’s departure was a production that rivaled, at least in quantity, the American plan dinner at Crosby’s Mansion House in Kinniput, Maine. I planned it with the boys’ favorite dishes in mind, plus a few of my “impulse purchases” at the Big Elephant Supermarket. It turned out to be a minor Lucullan feast. The menu, as I recall it, was: Appetizers: Mixed tuna fish and chopped ripe olives on potato chips, peanut butter and jelly on crackers, watermelon rind, pate de foie gras. Soups: Chicken without rice, vichyssoise. Entrees: Choice of hot dogs with pickle relish, mustard, and catsup; hamburgers with pickle relish, mustard, and catsup; spaghetti with tomato sauce; or smoked brook trout aux champignons. Vegetables: French fried potatoes, potato chips, artichoke au beurre noir. Salad: None. Desserts: Chocolate cake with fudge frosting, orange Jell-O with chocolate sauce and chocolate ice cream, Popsicles, fromage pont l’eveque. Beverages: Chocolate milk, Coke, Irish coffee. The popularity of this dinner taught me an important lesson. Every home with nonstop eaters for children should be equipped with a stomach pump, a convenience as necessary as a fire extinguisher. I still can’t understand why a hearty, well-balanced meal of all their favorite dishes should have caused the boys so much internal havoc. Once they recovered, I found myself faced with a serious between-meal snack problem. It being vacation, the boys were not only home most of the time, but they were usually surrounded by anywhere from five to 15 of their starving pals. To meet the snack requirements of this horde, I hit on my Continuous Snack Feeder. In the cellar I found an old three-gallon stone crock in which my grandmother had stored either candled eggs or dill pickles. I simply filled this crock with a 50-50 mixture of peanut butter and jelly. Then I laid in a stock of two dozen loaves of soft, spongy white bread and left them on a kitchen table beside the crock. The Continuous Snack Feeder required refilling only about every four days, and it eliminated the previous lament that “There’s nothing to eat in this house since Mother left.” My invention—the continuous hearty-snack feeder. Mary’s instructions on “keeping everything clean and tidy” were spelled out with the detail of an army manual. But I soon made a startling discovery: When it comes to cleaning, women lack both imagination and creativity. A recent piece of social research shows that the modern homemaker Continued on page 27

6 Suburbia Today, February 1962