Jack Paar, Aunt Vera, & Cornbread Muffins
A lonely teenager gets to spend time with her favorite aunt and Jack Paar...
Jack Paar, Aunt Vera, & Cornbread Muffins
Janelle Meraz Hooper
In the fifties, a late-night talk show starring host Jack Paar and every star, starlet, and singer/musician in Hollywood became popular in the nation. As my mom and I lived with my Hispanic grandmother, my chances to see it were less than getting to skip catechism on Saturday morning. The house was Gramma’s and the tv was hers too. She decided what we would watch. And wouldn’t watch. No one dared to suggest The Ed Sullivan Show if the June Taylor dancers were on. Gramma considered the tights and leotards the dancers wore offensive. Over and over she’d say, “Ain’t they got no shame? They’re naked!” Then she’d walk over to the television and change the channel.
But my luck was about to change. My mother was getting re-married and she and her sister Vera worked out a plan for me to stay with her and my uncle Rudolf while Mom and Jerry went on their honeymoon.
All of my mother’s sisters were colorful, but my Aunt Vera was my favorite because she always took my side when I had a problem with my dad. Whatever was wrong, she waved her wand and made my mom smile again. When Dad got hateful and refused to buy my ballet shoes for five dollars, my aunt provided them, along with the matching tights. Thanks to my aunt, pricey school photos were not a problem, and lunch money was never missing.
My mother was an expert seamstress. To repay my aunt, she made her sister showstopping costumes for events the officers had at the Officers’ Club on Fort Sill. Aunt Vera won a lot of costume contests wearing my mother’s creations. I thought the best one was the Dorothy costume inspired by The Wizard of Oz. It came with an old, borrowed bicycle and a little stuffed dog in the basket. Unfortunately, when my aunt drove it into the dining room, she crashed it into a bar cart and it was never the same after that.
Naturally, I was looking forward to hearing more stories about my aunt’s exploits. Especially the ones that never happened, like the time she wanted my mom to make her an Indian costume so she could go around to local farms and do a rain dance to make money from the local farmers. Their crops were suffering from a devastating lack of rain. My mom refused because she could see my aunt being chased by angry farmers with pitchforks when they discovered my aunt was not only a woman but she wasn’t even a Comanche shaman—she was Hispanic!
That was why, on the first day I spent with my aunt and uncle I jumped up, got dressed, and rushed in to see my aunt, hoping to hear one of her stories, but she wasn’t there. She was already on the golf course. When I got home from school I missed her again. She had been home earlier, made dinner for Uncle Rudolf and me, and left it in the refrigerator before rushing off to her bowling league.
The evening dragged by. Uncle Rudolf had been in the army at Fort Sill before he retired so he was used to going to bed early. I spent a lot of time doing my hair and nails for the next day and gave my homework a lick and a promise. Just as I was getting ready to crawl into bed, I heard her big black Buick rumbling in the driveway. Soon, my aunt flew through the front door and headed straight to the kitchen. Over her shoulder, she called to me, “Janie, turn on Jack Paar while I make us a snack.”
I explained that I had school the next day but she urged me to stay up and watch her favorite show with her. Somehow, she got a tin of cornbread muffins with raisins on the coffee table just before the show started. She must have used a mix.
What fun! Jack always had the most exciting and talented stars and we laughed and laughed—and somehow managed to eat the whole batch of cornbread muffins by the time the show was over.
And so it went every night that Jack was on for two weeks. Jack, muffins, and my favorite aunt. All to myself. How I loved it!
My Aunt Vera’s playfulness really came out on the nights Jack Paar wasn’t on. One night, she challenged me to find her jewelry box she kept hidden in her cluttered bedroom. I spent the evening looking for that wooden box that I’d never seen. I was even beginning to wonder if there really was a jewelry box to be found. I tore that room apart, checked every drawer, completely disassembled her new bedding from Sears Robuck, and opened every shoebox in the bottom of her closet (there were a lot of them!). Aunt Vera sat on the little stool in front of her makeup table and laughed while I searched for the lost treasure. All I found was a box full of ribbons she’d won at bowling tournaments and playing golf. I admitted defeat when we finished the box of chocolates she’d put in the middle of the bed for us to snack on. After we put the bed back together, she reached under the bed and pulled out the missing treasure that had been lodged between the bed frame and mattress. I’d looked there several times but never saw it because it was impossible to see in the dark. All these years, I’ve never broken my promise not to tell anyone where it was. Until now.
My sergeant dad would have had a fit to see me spending so much time with a woman he despised. And Aunt Vera never had much use for him, either. She left no doubt she considered him to be lazy, unwashed, and just plain mean. He said she was a rich, uppity, ex-officer’s wife and he had no use for her kind.
One would think that my grades would have suffered from all of those late nights full of laughter and games. But my grades were the best they’d ever been during the weeks my Uncle Rudolf took the day shift and made sure I had a hot breakfast and lunch—and Aunt Vera and Jack Paar brought up the rear with Greta Garbo, Frank Sinatra, and the Beach Boys. Dad would have liked Jack Paar even less than he liked Aunt Vera. But I think he would have liked the cornbread muffins with raisins…
This little story is an offshoot of my Turtle Trilogy, and it is dedicated to my cousin Dan and his son, David, because of their interest in stories about our family. At seventy-nine, I am the last one to remember my mother and the antics of her sisters. The memories linger on…
My Turtle Trilogy:
1. A Three-Turtle Summer (It’s a long, hot summer and Grace has to dump a man who’s meaner than a rattlesnake and dumber than adobe…) 1st Place Bold Media Award winner, 2002.
2. As Brown As I Want (Eight-year-old Glory has a father who’s taken out a $50,000 accidental-death policy on her. Now he’s spending the summer trying to collect.) A finalist in the 2004 Oklahoma Book Awards. 1999 1st Place Fiction at the writers’ conference book contest at Surrey, Canada.
3. Custer & His Naked Ladies (Sometimes, Custer is just an ole yeller dog…and Naked Ladies are really just old women in capri pants…a modern-day cowgirl and Indian romance.) This last novel is largely fiction as I grew up to be a normal housewife and mom and who wants to read about that?
Author Janelle Meraz Hooper
Coming soon! Geronimo’s Laptop, a historical fantasy