“No Laugh ‘N Matter”, by Gloria Pitzer – How I Spent My Summer Vacation
INTRODUCTION
In the 1960s and 1970s, my mom designed a few different editorial columns, satirically geared toward working homemakers like herself (or those who just want to laugh at life), mailing out samples to over 300 newspapers.
Within a year, she was steadily writing two different columns (“No Laughing Matter” and “Minding the Hearth”) for 60 regular papers. Mom found her life, as a struggling, working homemaker, wife, and mother of five, to be the best subject about which to write and it was so relatable to so many of her readers.
Mom also created paralleling cartoon panels, which she called “Full House – as Kept by Gloria Pitzer”; all of which likewise depicted her life in the 1960s and1970s, during the Women’s Liberation movement.
The internet is an awesome source of information and archives for finding some of Mom’s old “No Laughing Matter” columns; as well as her old cookbooks that have been out of print for years but can still be found on Amazon and eBay (sometimes for ridiculous amounts because they’re no longer in print).
I’m dedicating this tab and these monthly posts to her ageless, satirical, creative writing talents. I have a couple of binders full of her humorous commentaries and I look forward to re-sharing them all, here.
In honor of June, being National Great Outdoors Month, here is one of Mom’s “No Laugh ’N Matter” columns, regarding summertime…
As seen in…
“NO LAUGH ‘N MATTER”, by Gloria Pitzer (circa mid-1970s)
HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION
(And Other Fond Memories of Days Gone By)
I SEE THE NEIGHBORHOOD kids are in the spirit of summer… and it makes me remember, quite fondly, those days during which our own five youngsters were home and very much underfoot.
Although, some of the memories are pleasantly enjoyed today, in the absence of our offspring, some of those by-gone days were not all pretzels and beer!
I recall really trying to enjoy summer vacation, even though I had the feeling I was just a first grade version of “See Mother Run”. Most of the vacation weeks (and I use the reference loosely), were spent wandering through aspirin lectures, asking perfect strangers: “How many more days until school opens?”
As I [remember], we stopped spending vacations with the children; considering how, one summer, we spent 2 weeks on the turnpike… and lived to tell about it…
There honestly were positive virtues to the 9am to 3pm [school] schedules, which left us mothers 5 days a week, from September through June, during which we were not answering dumb questions. For one thing, it was none of the kids’ business why I looked pale and plump in a bathing suit.
I knew, the minute I walked into Chubby Chicks’ Swimwear Boutique, summer (for me) would mean running under the lawn sprinkler in very dark glasses and a body shirt, cleverly created out of a porch awning by some shut-in from General Hospital!
Actually, it was my husband’s idea, out of consideration for the neighbors, that he only let me sit on the patio in my bathing suit after dark. He also claimed that I discouraged mosquitos. This is the same man who would stand on the porch, whenever I sang in the shower, so the neighbors could see that he was not beating me!
The same man, mind you, who would come home from (and I quote him exactly) “an exhausting day of fishing” and ask, seriously – when was I planning to clean off the top of the refrigerator, did I write to his mother, did I have fun at the Book Mobile with 5 kids and would it be alright if we “ate out”…
That, by his definition, was hot dogs in the backyard over a fire in the grill that I would have to make. He just didn’t understand why I spent my summer vacation counting the days ‘til school opened again!
But then, he never had to find band aids for braless Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe [“action figures”], who got sucked into the vacuum cleaner hose periodically. My lovable, better half never had to wander through a vast wasteland of Pop Tart wrappers and Mr. Misty cups.
[Meanwhile,] seven neighborhood kids motorbiked their way through the yard, the flower beds and into the center of a National Noise Abatement Program, sympathetically excused by three probation officers who did not have to live next door to them!
Summer vacation, as some laughingly refer to those 10 weeks [mid-June to September], is NOT a vacation; but more like an endurance test – during which, those families who stayed together, got on each other’s nerves!
It was enough to leave a mother looking like a wire service photo that, by all rights, should have been printed under the caption: “NEVER MIND SENDING HER KIDS TO CAMP – HELP SEND THIS MOTHER AWAY!”
It’s mothers that need the vacation – not the kids! Ten weeks of kids at home and Mother could develop a personality [like that] of a dental drill with a voice to match! But, as I recall, telling the 5 kids one day, everything would be alright as soon as Daddy got home.
And the questions I had to answer all by myself – questions like: “How many more days until school starts?”, “Can I have a popsicle?”, “Can I have my allowance?”, “How come you’re always yelling at me?”, “Have you seen my tennis shoes?”, “Why doesn’t anybody like me?”
…And those were just the questions my HUSBAND asked! Compared to all those [questions] that the kids would ask me during the day, I could [better] take those which my husband posed to me. He meant well. But he never did understand that a mother’s vacation doesn’t start until school does!
LAST THOUGHTS…
For questions or comments, you can email me at therecipedetective@outlook.com. I’m also on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective.
[NOTE: As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share this.]
