Once you start remembering, it's really hard to stop

After waxing memory-wise about hauling hay and getting paid a dollar an hour, several folks had somewhat appropriate comments:

"Joe, you were overpaid."

"I hauled hay for $2 a day."

"I babysat for 25 cents an hour. How much do babysitters charge today?"

Answer: A lot more than 25 cents.

In addition to the random comments, my musings also set off a flood of memories Monday at my lunch table, which is generally occupied by men my age or older. We're not officially geezers yet, but we're pretty darn close.

One childhood memory that came to me, since fried chicken was on the buffet where we were eating, was how my mother would get up at daybreak on Sundays, kill and dress a couple of chickens, get the rest of the Sunday dinner ready to go, get ready for church, tell me to change pants because I already had the knees dirty on the ones I was wearing, remind me that the Lord is not particularly fond of little boys with dirty knees, get home from church and finish up dinner, get the meal on the table and, finally, call us all into the dining room for grace.

And that's when it would happen.

We didn't have telephones so likely guests could phone ahead and wrangle an invitation to Sunday dinner. No, unexpected guests would just show up on your front porch. Right at dinnertime. Your first clue, if you were watching, would be the cloud of dust, up the valley along the gravel and mud road, trailing behind a strange car.

With this bit of warning, the meal would be put on hold. Everyone would grab a rug to shake or a broom to sweep the porch. There was no way uninvited guests were going to catch us in anything but our Sunday best.

And my mother would look at me sternly and say, "Don't eat all the white meat, and save the drumsticks for the kids."

Then, when the visitors -- usually kinfolk -- piled out of the car, we made it look like we had been expecting them all along. Fortunately, there was always another quart of green beans to throw into the pot, and we wouldn't have leftovers for supper before we returned to church for the evening prayers and sermon.

As one of the occupants of the Monday lunch table observed, unexpected guests were tolerated because turnabout is fair play. How many times had we shown up at my Aunt Mary's, unannounced, for Sunday dinner? Were we ever turned away? Of course not. Did my aunt ever say she hadn't made enough for everyone to have dinner? Of course not. Did we ever leave hungry? You've got to be kidding.

The other thing we had in my childhood was a front porch. During warm weather everyone would retire to the porch to escape the heat of the house. We would carry out dining room chairs and camp stools so everyone could sit. Some of the older folks would be waving funeral-home fans to stir up the air a bit. On a good Sunday there would be a gentle breeze under the elm trees.

During our conversation Monday, this thought occurred to me: My childhood Sundays were not something that just happened to my family. Everyone at the table had had similar experiences. For a while we were all living in the past, and it was a good time.

"As much as I enjoy these memories," one fellow said, "I wouldn't want to live through my childhood again."

He was right, of course. Memories of Sunday dinner gloss over everything else that happened to us, and not all of it was pleasant.

But for a while, at a convivial Monday lunch, we were 10 or 12 years old again, and we remembered only the good stuff. Those are the best memories.

And we wished the buffet fried chicken had been even half as good as our mothers' best. We wished, but it didn't happen.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.