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Home Front Letters: Carmel Vila

Thanks to Carmel Vila, of Jefferson, La., for this unique description of the wartime dinners that her mother served to servicemen far from home. Paris is now anticipating the many soldiers who will be training at Camp Maxey, but let’s hope that the men and women don’t have to suffer politely such meals from well-intentioned “cooks” (about like me).

Generally there were at least five of them, and my mother would begin dinner with a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice, served in small jam glasses. She always put a sprig of mint on each glass, trying to make it festive and gay. Then she would present the baked chicken, her specialty, and one could always bet it was overcooked. It was dry, stringy, and tasteless, but the boys had been taught manners, and they smiled and said how really delicious it was. Then, of course, Mother would pass around the lumpy mashed potatoes, overly thick gravy, and overly large peas, since they were cheaper than the small ones ... The garlic bread was spread with heavy masses of butter and garlic, both needing to be melted much more than they had been, and sometimes an extra treat was a few corn muffins, burnt and hazy looking, but presented with a smile.

Along with the oversized peas, a bowl of fried carrots. Yes, you’ve read it correctly — fried carrots were passed, and everyone took as few as they could manage. Mother had read in McCall’s (a popular women’s magazine) how carrots could be cooked any number of ways, and the way she seemed pleased with was either boiled to pulp or fried black. The young men ate some of everything, no matter how it looked. It was a food comedy, and how they kept straight faces, I will never understand. Their faces must have hurt when they left my home.

Our dessert was always cut-up slices of watermelon, sometimes cubed, sometimes cut in shapes — one never knew what to expect. Many of these were Yankee boys and not watermelon eaters, but she would smile her sweet, southern smile and say, ‘Now don’t be bashful, son. Eat your nice melon, and then we’ll have coffee.‘ They would push it around the plate, and in the end, they would squeeze the juice out, leaving only fiber floating on the plate. Watermelons were very cheap during those years and fed a multitude of folks. Each Saturday she purchased a mid-sized melon for thirty cents, and we had melon every day of the week. I grew to think everyone had melon as dessert.

Finally, after Mother and I cleared the dishes, she would bring out the coffee pot, which was old and dented, but she was convinced that the coffee which poured from it was the best that money could buy. Sometimes she would put whipped cream on top of the coffee, making it, in her eyes, much more festive, and she would then offer a ten cent bag of those vile little after dinner mints of pastel colors to end the dinner properly.

Sometimes the guys would help Mother with the dishes, and when all of the thanks had been said, and all of the repeat invitations had gone out for another Sunday dinner, the guys and I would walk down the block to my best friend’s house, where we were able to play records and dance in her basement. She always had Kool Aid and gingersnap cookies, and some of the other girls would come to dance as well. When the time came for the guys to take the bus back to camp, my mother was already making plans for the following week’s dinner. She worked from early Sunday morning until four in the afternoon on Sunday, but she was always ready with her dinner and enjoyed the young company that I brought. They adored her, and for years we received Christmas cards from some of them thanking her for her southern hospitality and her fine dinners.

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