The Banana Peel War
A Tribute To My Mother!
This year's holiday season was tough on me. My mother passed away the
day before Thanksgiving. She was 85.
Fortunately, I was able to visit her in FL in October, and we spent a good couple of days together. She was confined to a wheel chair, but Ali and I managed to get her out one day for a lunch at Perkins, and then down to one of the spots that was always her favorite, Dairy Queen, where she proceeded to wolf down a large chocolate Sunday.
Emotionally, seeing my mother confined to a wheel chair was an extremely hard thing for me to bear. Her entire life was filled with constant "on the go" types of things. Just a couple of years ago she stayed with us for a couple of months right before Christmas. We made a trip to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area and even though she was 82, she was walking everywhere. The picture accompanying this article was taken on that trip at the Museum of Appalachia, in Clinton, Tenn.
Mother always enjoyed Gatlinburg, and the "Fudge Shop" that is on the strip not to far from one of her favorite eating places, the "Brass Lantern." Last October we told her that we were going to try to stop in Gatlinburg on our trip home, and she said over and over, "Make sure you stop at the fudge shop...best one in the world. And don't forget to stop on that corner where they sell those caramel apples. Those are also the best." She must have repeated this a dozen times over the course of our visit.
A month later, she died. Those who knew her will remember her for her really weird sense of humor, one of her traits I inherited. As I have been sorting through boxes of old photos, the most treasured memories I have are the ones that involve her sense of humor. And so, keeping with the humorous tradition of so many of my past blog entries, I want to write about one of my favorites. I called it "The Banana Peel War."
The year was 1978. My first wife and I were living in South Plainfield,
NJ. We were renting a ranch home that had this ugly green carpet, and the
most awful green colored wallpaper I have ever seen. It was that kind of
wallpaper that was popular in the 70's, with this felt-like relief pattern
that was a slightly lighter shade of green then the rest of the wall.
Unfortunately, this house in NJ had no such convenient location. As I was thinking about doing something to her, I walked into the kitchen and beheld a good sized bunch of very ripe bananas sitting on the kitchen table. The IDEA Was Born!. I peeled one of the bananas, then snuck up on my mother and slapped that gooey banana peel right across one side of her face. She jumped out of that chair like there was no tomorrow. Once she gained her composure, she snuck into the kitchen, grabbed one of those bananas, peeled it, and gave me the same. Before it was over we were running all around the dining and living rooms "winging" banana peels at each other, and each time one of them hit one of the walls, it would stick to that felt-like part of the wallpaper. This "war" went on for about half an hour and by the time we were done, there were banana peels sticking all over the place.
And then it happened! The door opened and my wife walked in. She became livid about the mess we had created, and that was the very first time I discovered that she could fly on a broom stick. My mother acted like a little kid who had just been caught torturing the cat. "Clay made me do it!" she exclaimed!
I am not sure my "ex" ever forgave either one of us.
Clay T. Enos
Photos by Clay-n-Ali
Clay and Ali's portrait web site can be found at www.clay-n-ali.com Their landscape photography web site is ...www.wallphotostore.com...