Scrambled Memories

It's funny how we seem to associate people or things in our past with a certain food. For example, when I was a little girl my parents and I would sometimes on a Sunday afternoon visit a much older couple that I've no idea how they even knew. It wasn't as if they were neighbors because I remember they lived way out in the country and that the drive out to their place took a long time.

I remember their names were Mr. & Mrs. Cato and on the Sundays we visited they'd have a gaggle of grand kids running around playing and I'd loved them. They were all blond, almost white blond. The younger ones ran around only in shorts, no shirts, and they were all barefooted. These by no means were well off people, in fact I suspect they were quite poor because I even remember an out house instead of indoor plumbing and I'm not so old that was the norm back then, thank you very much!

Anyway, my point is, always during that visit we'd have scrambled egg sandwiches. I think eggs were abundant as they had chickens running around amongst all those grand kids too. The sandwiches were never for a meal, as we'd go after Sunday lunch or dinner as we called it and we'd never stay until supper. It was what she served us for refreshments I guess. And not for just us kids either, for the grown-ups too.

She took white bread, smeared loads of mayonnaise on both sides (it was in the 1960's, we didn't know better) and she'd pile steaming yellow scrambled eggs on one side, and flop the other piece of bread on and squash it down with her hand.

I'm not sure what she did to make those eggs so good, but to this day I've never been able to replicate the taste of Mrs. Cato's egg sandwiches.

Eventually we stopped visiting. Who knows why, and those Sunday afternoons at the Cato's became memories. I can still see the old farm house, the porch with the flapping boards, all those little tow headed barefoot children. And even now I can remember how good those scrambled egg sandwiches were.