It seems, throughout the 11 years of writing this Sunday column, my most popular columns have been nostalgic posts. These musings of days from long ago only interest my generation, so I don’t feel it’s good to do nostalgia each time but today is that time; it’s a day to a reach back to the 1960s and the family dining room table. 

What prompts this post is the smell of hamburger steaks and onions in my kitchen right now, the smell of supper. Not dinner, “supper,” the meal my dad was home for and we all ate at our Early American dining room table every night after my mom eloquently but forcefully commanded, “Your dad’s home, go wash your hands and come eat supper.”

 My sister and I have often had conversations about the long ago suppers at our little house in the woods.  There were five of us, mom, dad, Susan, Dwayne and I and, somehow, our mom fed us on what we would consider today as scant amounts of food but, curiously, we were full; it was always enough. Susan and I try to understand this nightly feat she so deliciously and resourcefully performed.

Some nights she made salmon croquets with only one can of wild Alaskan salmon mixed with eggs and saltines, one box of Kraft mac and cheese, one can of sweet peas and, always, Evangeline Maid bread placed diagonally on the corner of the table by my dad; he was from Texas and could not complete a meal without bread, impossible. Sometimes, there was a dessert, banana pudding made with Jack’s Vanilla Wafers or brownies from her Betty Crocker cookbook, a wedding gift from 1952. My dad, towards the end of the meal, would strategically folded The Daily Iberian in half and began reading. This is when we usually left the table; he would stay there, silently, for a while reading every page.

The hamburger steak that started this wistful post was the centerpiece of another of my mom’s little miracle meals — ground meat mixed with egg and day old bread smothered with onions, with “sides” of creamed potatoes and cream corn. That’s how it was done and we left the table full and satisfied.

Maybe you grew up on Missouri or Monterey; I grew up on Live Oak Lane. Either way, most of us lived in these little neighborhoods with one-car carports where dads went to work and moms stayed home and attended the PTA meetings, signed report cards, made our dresses, put Mecuricome on our scratches, rubbed Vicks on our congested chests and at the end of each day,  we all ended up at the “supper table.” It was nice, it seemed secure. We were usually all there because we were not involved in much. My sister and I had dancing right after school once a week at Lester Mae’s. Later, I had a weekly half-hour piano lesson on Trotter with Mrs. Diane Moss and my brother played football at Catholic High when he was older, that was it; we were home for supper as a family most nights.

I know that times are not as they were and they shouldn’t be, we must move on but I do hope that every now and then, within their very busy week, moms still occasionally eloquently command “go wash your hands and come eat supper.”

PAM SHENSKY is a wife, mom to five and blogs at www.pamshensky.com.