INTRODUCTION
In the 1960s and 1970s, 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 that she called “Full House – as Kept by Gloria Pitzer”, all of which depicted her life as a working homemaker in the 1960s and 1970s, during the Women’s Liberation movement.
The internet is a wonderful source, with which to find many of Mom’s columns; as well as her cookbooks, many of which have been out of print for years but can still be found on Amazon and eBay (sometimes for ridiculous amounts just because they’re no longer in print).
I’m dedicating this tab and these monthly posts to Mom’s ageless and satirical writing talents. I have a couple of binders full of her humorous editorials and I look forward to re-sharing them all, here. In honor of November and National Gratitude Month, here’s one of her old “No Laugh ’N Matter” columns about Thanksgiving.
FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in… No Laughing Matter (a syndicated series of articles)
By Gloria Pitzer – Recipe Detective (circa mid-1970s)
THE PILGRIMS’ THANKSGIVING…
WAS NEVER LIKE THIS!
WE WON’T BE HAVING the family for Thanksgiving at our house this year, only because, before we could invite our relatives, there are certain decisions we must make – like who will sit on the camping stools, where to put the playpen, what to do with all of the coats, and how to keep Aunt Agnes away from the cooking sherry.
It’s such a relief that we’ve been invited to my sister’s instead. Even Elsa Maxwell would be the first to agree that it would be best for all concerned, considering what happened at last year’s dinner.
Of course, you cannot have a gathering of our clan without running into certain small problems that can’t be [fixed] overnight. For instance, I am suddenly aware that all of our bath towels came from laundry soap and all of our drinking glasses once belonged to grape jelly.
I began to notice things like a philodendron with rigor mortis, a bread bag full of Halloween candy under the sofa, and a rotten Easter egg behind the book ends. (And, here, we thought the dog smelled all the time.)
It isn’t easy making a house look like it’s never been lived in by five kids, a hamster with a problem, two gerbils, a collie who thinks she is [a person], and 19 Brownies in the dining room, practicing their “flying-up” speeches.
What we really need is a house the size of Rhode Island and then we’d probably have to feed all the kids in Connecticut to accommodate everyone comfortably – but compared to what went wrong with our Thanksgiving last year, the pilgrims had it easy!…
My husband called [my cornbread] “Plymouth Rock” in front of all of my in-laws and then offered first aid to Uncle Bertram, when he dropped a piece of it on his foot. I will never know for certain if my cooking was the real reason that everyone said grace before, during, and after the meal.
But what else could I think, when my very own son complimented my pie crust by comparing it to Portland Cement? When your husband sees the candied sweet potatoes coming out of the oven, does he suggest you serve it topless – to compensate?
When the turkey got up and walked off the table, I thought it was rather subtle of my husband to suggest that perhaps it wasn’t done enough. Well, to get maximum attention, it’s certainly hard to beat a good mistake!
I could have blamed it on my temperamental oven but there was my mother-in-law, insisting if I cleaned it once in a while, I would have those problems licked. Clean the oven! What does she think I am – a TV commercial or something? At least my oven looks like it’s been well used.
Well, this Thanksgiving will be very pleasant. My sister is a marvelous organizer. She’ll never be caught curling carrot strips in the kitchen while her guests parish with hunger in the parlor. In fact, she’s going to have it pot luck [style], and the whole family will no doubt be grateful that she asked me to bring the camping stools!
We hope to have a lovely Thanksgiving [and] hope you all have the same!
LAST THOUGHTS…
Have a gratitude attitude this month. Be grateful every day for something. For example, today, I am grateful for the internet and social media, as it keeps me in contact with more people, more frequently than I ever could have prior to 1995.
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.]
