Well, my friends, I have to admit I am now well fed, often because of generous friends and clients, who open up their homes -- AND KITCHENS! -- to me.
Below is my true reminiscence of being a poor child who really only got filled up at Nana's. Grandpa had a good job and food was in ample supply.
HUNGRY, ALWAYS HUNGRY
How I envied the rich whose homes I helped Mom clean when I was a child.
Certainly, the yellow 1953 Buick Skylark and the slightly newer, silver Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham reposing aristocratically upon the bricked drive garnered admiring glances from a boy still on two wheels. Likewise, the clean lines, impeccable finish and understated elegance of the country estate, what with its luxuriant, manicured grounds, filled my heart with a vicarious sense of belonging unknown to one sparingly nurtured on the other side of the tracks.
However appealing the trappings of the well-to-do, it was not the extraneous luxuries that I longed to possess. It was the cupboards, the walk-in pantries, the refrigerators and freezers filled to an excess that this poor and lean boy wanted to plunge into, not being compelled to exit till his hunger was once and for all sated, his belly truly full. Our household budget allowed a mere ten dollars a week for groceries for a family of five; I was, understandably, always ravenously hungry.
Years later, the larder is modestly filled with sufficient to get me by, yet when I go into the home of a friend with a food budget more ample than my own, my eyes stray to the cupboards, the walk-in pantries, the refrigerators stocked to overflowing.
At Nana and Gramp's post WWII house:
