Member-only story
Papa and the Grape Juice Flavored Clabber
On My List of Cherished Memories
Maybe I like to write about myself. Perhaps I don’t. Something funny to me may not be amusing to anyone else. I have never seen a story about something.
It’s the look on someone’s face when they drink something unexpectedly yukky.
I had had that taste when something I scooped in my mouth was spoiled or when I begged my mom for a taste of caviar from a smorgasboard we went to, which looked to me to have the potential flavor of blackberries but tasted like fish ovaries which it was.
When I was about 11, I was visiting my grandparents in northern Louisiana and got up as early as Papa one morning. He usually ate boiled eggs with mustard, milk, and grape juice. That morning I saw him look at the glasses of milk and grape juice, and with an eye out for efficiency, he poured the grape juice into the milk.
The milk curdled immediately, and he took a gulp. However, instead of a wide-eyed yuk taste look on his weathered face, he said, “Maybe you oughta try this!” I gave him the old unh-unh look to let him know that he hadn’t wasted 11 years of attention on someone who was that easily fooled.
Although he didn’t get the yuk-look, I laugh about the way he tried to get me to have a swallow of grape juice-clabbered milk.
