May 15, 2006
Mom
As Mother’s Day winds down, I’m reminded of during the Great Depression when my mom made beer. They called it home brew. After a day of bottling, the caps would blow off during the night and sound like maybe the shootout at the OK Corral. When she eventually found a mixture that didn’t explode so much, the whole family slept better.
I was proud of my mom’s skill. So much so that I bragged about her to the neighbors. This was pretty early on in my life and provided an occasion for me to learn about what I would later discover was something like stand-up comedy. I found that I enjoyed the local neighborhood publicity, and that if I said certain things in a certain way some people seemed to think that I was pretty funny and maybe even smart. I don’t know for sure, but maybe this had something to do with what was later on more formally considered to be a “call” to the ministry, an undertaking where one gets to do stand-up a lot and on a regular basis.
Anyhow, the thrill was short lived. When word of my successful performances got back to my folks, they weren’t nearly so proud of me as I had hoped they’d be. Instead, I got grounded.
The home-brewing stopped altogether. We got rid of all the yeast and the crocks and the bottles and the bottle-cappers and any signs of there ever having been my mom’s home-based industry that I was so proud of. For you see, this was not only during the Great Depression, it was also during the Great Prohibition.