XPost: alt.home.repair, sci.chem
On 30 Sep 2023 19:17:21 GMT, lowbrowwoman, the endlessly driveling, troll-feeding, senile idiot, blabbered again:
it's been ages but I had a thing for McDonald's Filet-O-Fish to the extent
of rolling my own, one of the few times I deep fried anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filet-O-Fish
I didn't realize it started as a Catholic thing.
I can't remember anything before Vatican II. I can't remember what we
ate on Fridays, so maybe it wasn't anything special. We were a house
full of heathens. I do remember going to the occasional Lenten fish
fry.
I was a high school junior when it got rolling. 'American Graffiti'
resonates with me. I was a happy heathen up to 7 or 8 and had worked out
my own animistic world view. Then one Boy Scout week when they were
talking about going to church with your parents I asked the fatal question 'What is this church thing?" and it was off to the races, with 'religious instruction' on Wednesday. When a little old Irish nun asked me to recite
one of the commandments and realized I didn't know there were ten of them
let alone any specifics, she called me a little heathen. She didn't know
how right she was.
In general my extended family didn't pay too much attention to religion
and excessive religiosity was viewed as mental illness. Most kids were baptized Catholic just in case. The theology didn't stick but there is a cultural Catholic thing. My wife was raised Methodist but tended to go
church shopping based on the community and other factors I couldn't understand. At least back then the Catholic Church was like McDonalds. If
you were on vacation and went to Mass in East Moosenuts Missouri it was
going to be the same liturgy, same vestments, same readings, and, please,
no spontaneous outbursts or singing. There might be a choir at High Mass; please do not join in with the people who can actually sing.
Come to think of it, Tuesday was our day to eat fish. Grandma had the
day off work, so she went to the fishmonger, bought some sort of white
lake fish, breaded it in cornflake crumbs and pan fried it until it was
dry as dust. Thus began my tartar sauce addiction, which I was able to
conquer in adulthood.
Jean's Ready To Eat specialized in takeout fried fish so my mother left it
to the pros. Sometimes there would be a pan fried selection of stuff we caught, perch, sunfish, bullheads, and so forth. I liked fishing but
didn't care for much of the catch except the bullheads.
Salmon pea wiggle on toast came up regularly and was pretty good.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/49717/salmon-pea-wiggle/
I don't remember the circumstances but at one point canned red salmon went from being fairly cheap to very expensive and hard to come by. Pink salmon was considered cat food.
I don't remember my mother ever making it but 'pasta fazoo' was another popular Friday selection or if push came to shove corn fritters or
pancakes.
And paychecks were much smaller. Food (in general) takes a smaller
percentage of one's income nowadays. In 1900, it was 40% of income; in
1950, it was 30%. In 2022, it was 11.3%.
My father somehow came up with a hundred dollar bill and it was an object
of wonderment. I don't often use credit cards for local purchases and most often use 20s from the ATM but I think there are 3 or 4 hundreds in my
wallet just in case.
Both my parents worked and I remember my father bringing home about $100 a week in the '50s and my mother getting about the same. They owned their
own home, ate well including going out to fairly fancy restaurants occasionally, bought new cars regularly, took vacations sometimes renting cottages in Maine or Cape Cod for a week or two and so forth. There were
some sketchy periods like during the Eisenhower recession but I never felt deprived or that the family was on the edge of disaster.
I can't speak for the average blue collar family today.
HIGH time for you to make another appointment with your psychiatrist! I'm
sure he has the right pills for you to quiet you down a bit again! <BG>
--
More of the resident senile gossip's absolutely idiotic endless blather
about herself:
"My family and I traveled cross country in '52, going out on the northern
route and returning mostly on Rt 66. We also traveled quite a bit as the interstates were being built. It might have been slower but it was a lot
more interesting. Even now I prefer what William Least Heat-Moon called
the blue highways but it's difficult. Around here there are remnants of
the Mullan Road as frontage roads but I-90 was laid over most of it so
there is no continuous route. So far 93 hasn't been destroyed."
MID: <
kae9ivF7suU1@mid.individual.net>
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