WHAT IS IN THAT GLASS?
(From the book “America! America?” Copyright 2003, 2005)
It was my first morning in Amarillo. I had not slept very well – probably it was the unfamiliar
hard bed, the occasional hissing sound of the air conditioning, and the distant sorrowful horns
of Santa Fe steam locomotives. About four in the morning I finally fell asleep. Then, at
seven, it happened. There was this very soft, gentle “ding” sound emanating from a large “Big Ben”
alarm clock that had been placed in my room. Another mild “ding.” And then another. I was
beginning to wake up. “Ding, ding.” Was the clock becoming more insistent? A little louder,
“ding, ding, ding, ding!” I guess I could have gotten out of bed to push the button on top of
that clock, but I was tired. I had not yet gotten used to the time change – and I had not slept
well. But this seemed such a gentle clock, despite its large size. “Ding-ding, ding-ding,
ding-ding-ding.” I still stayed under the covers. But suddenly, all hell broke loose. The
clock stopped dinging, now it rattled, screamed at me, bounced wildly around the cabinet
and forced me out of bed. I must say it was effective. But the nice gentle reminder of
morning at the beginning had been replaced with a nasty and bossy attitude. Somehow it
reminded me of some people I had known, people who make believe they are so nice when,
in fact, they are only waiting for their chance to attack. I felt about this clock as I felt
about those people: I no longer trusted it. From now on, every morning, I would hit it as
soon as it’s gentle cycle started.
But now I was up. I showered and dressed. It was time for breakfast. Breakfast in
America? What would that be? Mrs. Harding was already in the kitchen. She had made a
large pan of bacon. But it was breakfast time, not yet time for lunch or dinner! Did people
in America eat bacon for breakfast? And so much of it? There were only three of us!
Maybe she thought that the young German was especially hungry.
She said something as I walked into the kitchen. I could not understand her Texas accent.
She said it again. It was not a question, so when I did not understand her sentence the
second time I just smiled. After all, she had smiled too. Probably she said something nice.
Her frying pan was full of grease when the bacon had been removed. Now she took eight
eggs and broke them into the pan. Eight fried eggs? For three people? If, on some
occasional lucky Sunday, we had been able to have one egg for breakfast during my
childhood, it had been a reason for celebration! And in the mornings we would at best boil
an egg. One could not waste precious fat on frying things that could be eaten boiled.
Who was going to eat eight eggs? That was nearly three eggs a person! And these were
large eggs!
But wait, she was not making fried eggs after all! As the eggs were nearly done – the white
was hard and the yellow was nearly hard – she grabbed a fork and stirred all of it around.
I looked astonished.
“In America, this is called scrambled eggs!” she explained.
Scrambled eggs? When I had learned the English language term “scrambled eggs” in
German school, it was translated into the German “Ruehreier.” And if you made Ruehreier,
you would scramble the eggs first before putting them into the pan. Strange. Maybe they
did it differently in America than in England, and certainly differently than in Germany.
Mr. Harding came in from their bedroom. He said “good morning.” That I understood.
“Ready for breakfast?”
I was ready. Anytime. This lunch-like breakfast was great. Only the bread was strange:
pure white and so soft. When you put butter on it – and the butter was hard, just out of the
refrigerator – the bread would tear: I was buttering the plate. I had never buttered such soft
bread. I had never inadvertently buttered a plate either.
The Hardings urged me to eat more. “You are …..” she said. Once more I did not
understand. “Excuse me?”
She repeated her short sentence much louder, as though my hearing was bad – something I
later noticed a lot of people would do when I could not understand their language. But it
was not my hearing. It was that unfamiliar way of speaking English.
“You are s-k-i-n-n-y! You should eat more!”
But after what amounted to two strips of bacon, about two eggs and some bread I could not
continue. My stomach had not appropriately expanded for all that food to fit. I was six foot
two inches tall, but weighed less than 160 pounds. We had not had enough to eat for years!
“And I was going to take you for a special treat!” Mr. Harding spoke slowly – I understood.
“But we can wait until a little later.
When the time for the “treat” arrived, I climbed into the passenger seat of his 1950 Buick,
that car with those big aggressive teeth in the front grill. We drove toward downtown and
stopped at a drug store.
There was a bar in the drug store! Strange, in Germany drug stores were not allowed to sell
alcohol. But then – it looked different than most bars. Except for the wooden top, the bar
was silvery, and so were the utensils which the ladies behind the bar were using. Lady bar
tenders? Strange. But they were serving sandwiches and cokes to the people sitting on bar
stools next to the place where we sat down. That I had not expected in a bar. For that
matter, no one there seemed to have alcoholic drinks.
Mr. Harding ordered cokes to start out with. And then he pointed at something on the
cellophane enclosed menu card. It was to be just for me. No, he did not want one.
The waitress grabbed a tall silver colored container and put several things in it. I could not
see what it was – her back was turned toward me. She seemed to push some buttons and
took something out of a bin below. Then she placed the container under a roundish machine.
A gurgling and whirring started, changing to all whirring. Finally she took the container off
the machine, poured a thick liquid into a tall glass, and placed the glass and the silverish
container next to me. A straw followed.
“Here!” she smiled and turned away to make a sandwich for another customer.
I looked at the concoction. It was off-white, so thick that it did not flow into an even
surface. But it smelled wonderful! Like vanilla and something else.
“You can use the straw to drink it!”
I can? I tried. Nothing came through the straw. Was this liquid or a solid substance?
“Well, you could drink it!”
Drinking worked better. Very, very slowly some of it flowed into my mouth. It was
incredibly wonderful! Like ice cream, yet nearly like a drink! Was this the most wonderful
taste I had ever experienced? Maybe it was.
This was America! What an incredible place! What a wonderful place! It was my very first
full day in Amarillo, Texas, the United States of America! And I loved it already!
But I needed to know what I was drinking – or was it eating? So I asked. “Thank you so
much for getting this for me. But what is it? I have never tasted anything so wonderful!
Mr. Harding smiled. “It’s a milkshake!”
If you want to continue to read the stories in the order they were selected for this site, please
click on “next page.” If you prefer to select which item in this site you would like to see next,
please click on “Return to Glossary.”