IT MUST BE JELLY 'CAUSE JAM DON'T SHAKE LIKE THAT

What follows is a story from my early boyhood that has always stuck in my memory. Read it and you'll discover why. (07/09/2018)

IT MUST BE JELLY ‘CAUSE JAM DON'T SHAKE LIKE THAT

During my seventh year, I helped my mother make grape jelly one Saturday. At the time my culinary experience encompassed two skills, sifting flour when she made cakes or muffins and licking the spoon when she made puddings: Chocolate, rice or tapioca. After I rinsed the grapes under a steady flow of tap water, she placed them in a large pot of boiling sugared water. Later, she strained the contents through a piece of cheese cloth into another pot. Subsequently she ladled this hot liquid nectar into numerous glass jelly jars, covering each with a thin layer of paraffin. Space limitations must have caused her to set these jars atop a tray she placed on a kitchen chair rather than the table, allowing them to cool. The tray protruded at least six inches from the edge. Enough jelly had been made to feed an army for two wars.

“Can I have some, Mom?”

“Later. The jelly has to cool for a while.”

If a watched pot does not boil, a watched jar of jelly does not cool. I retired from the kitchen and went to my bedroom to play with my rubber band gun fashioned from a wooden orange crate. These guns could be dangerous, but in those days, parents and kids gave little thought to the risks they posed. My ammo supply consisted of a deck of cut-up playing cards, each bullet about an inch square. It had a range of thirty feet, depending upon the size and elasticity of the rubber band.

Wandering back into the kitchen, fully engaged in the process of loading my gun, I sat down in my favorite chair, forgetting the presence of the tray. In a flash, I transformed it into a catapult, hurling jar after jar to the Four Corners of the Universe and in the process, covering myself with their warm sticky purple contents.

My mother lost her temper. She spanked me, quite hard, yanked me down the hall by my arm and tossed me into bed, leaving me to cry for a very long time. Dinnertime passed without an invitation to partake. After what seemed like an eternity, my big brother came into the room and tried to console me. Finally, his soothing words calmed me down. I stopped weeping.

“The worst is over,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

I replied through a few remaining sniffles, “Yes.”

"Would you like a jelly sandwich?"   

The very thought of eating what had been my apparel for many long 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. ▄