Saturday mornings

As children, my sister and I always enjoyed the opportunity to spend the night with either set of our grandparents - especially since it allowed us to escape from our two pesky younger brothers for several blessed hours. I'm sure we had more of these Friday night sleepovers at Granda and Daddy Bent's house (since they lived just a couple of miles away from us), than we did with Mutt and Granddad (since they lived an hour away).

At Granda and Daddy Bent's house on Skyline Drive in our hometown of Jackson, Tifni and I would usually sleep in Uncle Ben's room. Ben was our mother's much-younger brother (age difference of ten years), and after he vacated his bedroom in order to attend Union University, it became the guest room. We usually woke up in his double bed a few minutes after 6:00 a.m., and as 6:30 a.m. approached we crept through the living room - past the crystal bowl full of lemon drops - to the den. After turning on the TV, we nestled ourselves into the twin recliners and restlessly watched The Farm Bureau Report, anxiously awaiting the magic hour of 7:00 a.m., when the Saturday morning cartoons would be aired. 

While we watched cartoons, we always heard noises in the kitchen indicating that our breakfast of canned biscuits was being prepared. The best thing about the canned biscuit breakfasts was that there were always some left over, which we were allowed to toss out the backdoor to lure the squirrels. My grandparents' toy poodle, Thane, would then stand sentinel on his hind legs peering out the screen door, awaiting a squirrel's arrival. As soon as he spotted one, we would fling open the door and Thane would dart out the door, launch himself off the concrete slab of a back porch, and hightail it through the yard in a vain attempt to catch a biscuit-eating squirrel. He never caught a single one.

Our routine at Mutt and Granddad's house was very different and had its own charms. We had several options of where we could sleep at their house, but no matter where we slept we could hear the ticking of clocks. Restoring old clocks was one of Granddad's hobbies, so almost every room in the house featured a ticking, chiming timepiece. When we woke up on Saturday mornings in our paternal grandparents' white-columned house on Stonewall Drive in Union City, we knew we would not be reclining and watching cartoons. Instead, we had to get up early and go to work with my grandmother at her business, the Hospital Flower Shop. 

As we walked through the business's back door shortly before 7:00 a.m., Mutt would unfailingly ask, "Do you want a Coke? Go get yourself one - the key is in the machine." This was the moment I had been waiting for - a chance to drink an ice cold Coke out of a glass bottle for breakfast! (It was a bad habit I continued to indulge for roughly three decades.) Fully caffeinated, my sister and I would then get to work alongside the Hospital Flower Shop's employees creating our own arrangements, which Mutt graciously allowed us to price and place on the shelves in the showroom. Amazingly, every Saturday after we returned to the Shop from lunch, our floral creations had been sold!

Mulling over these Saturday morning childhood memories has made me hungry and thirsty. While I can't bring myself to pop open a can of biscuits, I think I'll bake my favorite Pillsbury frozen biscuits as a suitable substitute. And since I have glass bottles of Coke in my fridge, I know what I can use to wash them down.