How a man who loved food got through the month of March.
Molly Dugger Brennan
Inventing Hangry
Ah, spring. So full of promise. The world comes back to life, shrugging off winter’s gray, blossoming into colors, pastel at first, then deepening into brilliant daffodil yellow and hyacinth blues. Spring lifts everyone’s spirits, everyone that is but my Dad.
In our house, March was a month spent reading in your room. March was the month for tiptoeing through the house. March was the month that my homework was always completed, early even. Mama caught up on every chore and did all her sewing. If it was possible to become invisible, March was the month to do it.
You see, after the abundance of Thanksgiving, the largesse of Christmas, and the boxes of Valentine’s Day chocolates, Daddy would start his diet on the 1st of March for the yearly Virginia State Police weigh-in. He invented the concept of “hangry,” that combination of hungry and angry resulting in a level of irritability that was simply not possible on a full, satisfied stomach. God help you if you were speeding in our tiny town during March. Even just a whiff over the speed limit would be a ticketable offense.
My dad enjoyed food. He lived for meals. He adored a good, old-fashioned meat-and-three restaurant. He’s been known to order two pieces of pie when he couldn’t decide between different flavors. So trust me when I say my Daddy loved to eat.
When he was in school, his mama got up early every morning so she could put hot, homemade biscuits on the table for breakfast. It’s rumored that his high school football britches had a waist of 54 inches. I’ve seen old team photos. That’s a believable number.
I know he had to slim down when he was drafted into the Army. I don’t know how they did it, but I am sure that whatever method they used, it honed a killer instinct. I’ve seen an old photo of him at a café in Paris while on leave. He looked so happy. The small table is filled, mounded up really, with pastries. So I guess his dealing with dessert indecision by ordering multiples started early.
Anyway, in March Daddy would do his own grocery shopping. Just two items were on the shopping list. He bought cans of salmon and boxes of saltine crackers. For every meal; breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he opened a can of salmon and a sleeve of saltines. Every day all day long, salmon and saltines, until the last day of March.
An amusing by-product of his restrictive diet is that our trash can became the most popular spot within five miles for the raccoon population. Possums were interested too, but the fish scent drew every raccoon to our back porch. The raccoons looked as happy as Daddy had looked in that Parisian café. They were the only creatures in high spirits that Daddy had an employment weigh-in looming. The rest of us were on eggshells.
Now I don’t ever remember hearing my daddy curse, but each morning when he weighed himself you knew what kind of a day it was going to be if he sighed. Sighs were not good. Sighs were signs of exasperation, not joy. A good number on the bathroom scale would illicit a “how about that?” or a “whee doggy.” A sigh was the signal to go play outside.
By the second week of March, the rest of the family was eating clandestinely. Daddy looked so pitiful as he’d watch others eat. “What you got there? A cookie?” It would break your heart. Supper time moved to 4 pm so the scent of food would be eradicated and all evidence of consumption removed before Daddy ever got home.
Of course, we were on pins and needles the day Daddy had to go to Richmond for his weigh-in and annual review. This was way before cell phones, so we had to wait until he got home to know if he’d hit his goal or was disciplined for being chubby. Pins and needles, I tell you.
If it went well, and I remember it going well most years, you’d know the minute his foot hit the porch. He’d start hollering. “Mama, get the girls ready. We’re going out to supper.”
Now, who wants a couple pieces of pie?
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The story above appears in our March/April 2019 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription.