Popcorn and Cher

I am the oldest of four children, so it is unusual for me to remember a time where I was alone while growing up. My oldest sibling, my brother is four years younger than me, so I must’ve had a few years where I had my mom all to myself, it’s just difficult to remember when I was two years old. The one thing I remember most at that age is when my mother became pregnant with my brother and we had to come up with a name for him. My father campaigned for the name Jason which was completely inappropriate for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that the neighbor’s kid was named Jason, so that was obviously confusing. Imagine yelling out into the neighborhood letting Jason know that dinner was ready. The second reason is that with my name being Kaline, I was not about to have a brother named Jason. Torturing, namecalling and constantly having to explain it and spell it for people was going to have to be a part of my younger brother’s life as much as it was mine. And so my brother Kenon was born shortly after my 4th birthday.

Long before my brother came along, we lived in a trailer park. It was a decent park, actually with not very many trailers in the park. I seem to remember it being kind of pretty. This was not the average lot where there were rows and rows of trailers set up like you should be camping. Our trailer was the grooviest- orange shag carpet and green velvet furniture with fantastic lamps. My father had an insane amount of records that were always spinning Steely Dan or the Average White Band. Friends dropped by at their leisure and there were two of my parent’s best friends next door- Linda and Buddy Bunt. Linda and Buddy were the fun kind of couple that everyone wanted to be friends with and they were also the type of people that would do anything for you when you were in trouble- and you would do anything for them. They had a daughter, Jenny that was my age and therefore became my default best friend in early childhood because we usually were thrown together in a babysitting situation. Most of what I remember about Jenny is that we liked each other very much and we got along great. However, she used to stop speaking to me because I messed up her coloring books by not coloring exactly the same way that she was coloring. Allegedly, I did this by coloring outside the lines or accidentally tearing a page because I had pressed the crayons too hard against the paper.

My father always seemed to work. He worked more than one job- and one of those jobs was a bartending stint. During this time, there were a lot of nights where my mom and I would be home alone together. One of my favorite memories comes from this time period. I’m sure my mom doesn’t necessarily look at this as fondly as I do because it probably was not her favorite thing that her husband was at a bar all hours of the night and not at home with her. Mom would not cook a full meal when dad wasn’t home- “why bother cooking if it is just you and me?,” she would say. And I knew it was going to be fun night. TV Dinners! The old Swanson dinner in tin foil that took 75 minutes to heat up in the oven. When it finally did heat up, there was nothing like that rubbery Salisbury steak in congealed “gravy” that you could not cut into if you tried. You had to pick it up with your fork and take a bite out- there was no cutting the steak. The obligatory vegetable- usually peas that sometimes tipped into the gravy during cooking and then there were the gritty mashed potatoes. In order to handle the potatoes, you had to pick gravy or butter and drown them. The best part, as everyone knows was the dessert. Nobody really knows exactly what it was, but it was called either cherry crisp or apple pie. The tiny dessert compartment would be decimated by the long stay in the oven. What would be left was a small scoop of sticky syrup with a few crumbs on top and piece of fruit that was barely recognizable. Most importantly, it was filled with sugar. I always saved it for last just like they did on the commercial.

After “dinner” she would pop corn in the old fashioned corn popper. The popper with the yellow cover that conveniently turned into a bowl immediately following popping. Mom would pop two batches and she would melt a stick of butter and let me pour it over the top as I stood on a chair to reach the counter and she would stop to shake it up each time I poured. Specifically vivid to me is that mom never separated the popcorn into separate bowls like lots of parents do. We would spread the crocheted blanket out on the floor in front of the giant Zenith console tv set, put the giant bowl of popcorn in the center and quickly turn the channel to Donny & Marie. Marie would prance around the stage in a flowery dress and sing Paper Roses (or inevitably something like it) with a giant smile. Donny would wear one of his fun pant suits and charm the crowd. The whole time, I was shoveling greasy, buttery popcorn into my mouth with no fear that we would run out because we had the two batches! Next, Sonny & Cher. Now, I would have liked to have combined the two shows and had Donny & Cher. No offense, Marie. But everyone knows that women watched that show and a few of us gay guys. We watched for Donny and then we watched for Cher. Everyone knows that. Cher never failed to disappoint with her countless costume changes (always into another Mackie dress). She wore the things you saw in magazines, but never found at your local rural shopping mall. Always bedazzled, always sparkling under the light, always wild and daring. She sang songs that made almost no sense, but you didn’t care because you were mesmerized by her jewelry, hair and costume. Sonny did something funny and then it was time for bed. I got to sleep in Mom’s bed until Dad came home and carried me into my own bed. In my dreams, I would get the Donny & Marie record player from Santa and the Cher doll. I did end up with the record player, but I am still waiting for the Cher doll.

To this day, I still have not had popcorn that tasted that way ever again. The Pop Secret microwavable snack size bags just don’t fill the gap.