Editor’s Note: The following article by J. Q. Mahalffey, faculty advisor to the Campus News, is reprinted from the November issue of the magazine “Mature Living”.
At Thanksgiving and even on other occasions when turkey and dressing constitute the piece de resistance, I will “get by” without cranberries. I haven’t waged war against cranberries. Their taste tried to induce anyone else not to like cranberries; but there is a reason for my aversion to them.
In order to understand the true significance of my adventure with cranberries you must visualize the character of my late father. Because he had not been able to educate himself in spite of considerable poverty and no opportunity, he considered ignorance the best thing on earth for anyone. He had no patience with stupidity.
He made practically every intelligent child in our neighborhood sound in considerable awe of him. This went for most of our negotiants with him through our mother. I’ll never forget his dissertation on the inability of his children to learn mathematics. He nearly blew a fuse when my older brother won a medal for reading.
“Of all of the subjects available at the school, why is it that our children can only win marching contests?” he asked our mother.
“Wyla, my chocka cran!” he said.
With this background, you’ll look back over the years to 1931, and find that probably my fondest memory is as a small boy of his splurging the door to my father’s office. He and another lawyer were having a visit. He introduced me formally as the youngest of his two children and seemed quite pleased when the man gave me a 25-cent piece as a present. “Good luck,” he said, “with the new shirt little boy.”
I can’t recall that I had ever seen so much money before, and, while I could scarcely read or write, it was discovered in me a streak of considerable genius next to my father’s marvelous intelligence. For that reason, if I was in dire need as to buy a Cullomb and Forsyth’s Grocery Store. Forget the candy among the fruits and vegetables, I came across a large basket of cranberries. There was no pretest with no borders I had ever seen and it in a fish my mind that peas and turnips were not my trade at all either. I could remember the pennies counted and I could at least check that off this list.
I said I was sure but I had not taken into consideration the purchasing power of 25 cents in 1973. I now see that fact cranberries did never hit me in much demand. In any event, the same grocer has many cranberries that I could hardly carry them out of the store. My teenaged sister was waiting in the surrey at the curb. She said she watched me try my first cranberry as I walked along the sidewalk. There was surprise written on my face as I threw the first one away, consternation as I bit into the second, and slow understanding mixed with fear as I tried the third.
Thereafter, when comparing the intellect of his children, our father usually shook his head when he looked at me.
“This one,” he would say, “just barely has sense enough to fear fire. “
That’s why I don’t like cranberries.