Mink Stole – in three acts

February 9, 2020 – Mink Stole – in three acts

ACT ONE:

         We lived in rural America when we were kids.  I have a favorite saying now when someone asks me where I am from, “Small town, we only had one stop light intersection,” it still is close to the truth.

         My parents went grocery shopping once a week on Thursday nights, my brother Ken and I tagged along.  In the summer time when we had cookouts – we had the traditional “hot dog” buns that you buy.  But in the fall and winter when Mom spent all day slow cooking homemade baked beans, the classic “hot dog” bun was absent from the table most of the time.

         I wasn’t crazy about the baked beans when I was a kid, I sort of grew into them as a teenager.  I found that as long as I could spoon some sweet pickle relish on the baked beans, I could eat them.

        

         I remember it as if it were yesterday, my Mom asking if I wanted my hot dog on a plate with the beans or if I wanted it wrapped in a “mink stole,”  which was a hot-dog wrapped in a piece of white bread. I'd always have it in a mink stole with more sweet pickle relish.

         When I got married, we were on “skinny” money, like my parents had been, and I asked my husband, “Do you want your hot dog on the plate with the beans or wrapped in a mink stole?”  Up until that moment, I didn’t know it was a phrase my Mom had created.

         Tonight we needed something quick for supper and I made steamed hot dogs and not having purchased any hot dog buns, I asked,

         “Honey, okay if your dog is wrapped in a mink stole?”

         My husband smiled and nodded.

ACT TWO:

         In the wintertime, Mom would get up early, slice grape fruit, take a serrated knife to each half and run it around the inside edge to break the wedges from the white membranes and then dust them with powdered sugar.  At breakfast, they were waiting for us kids to suck down our Vitamin C grape fruit sections to ward off colds.

         One day sitting down to breakfast before school, I noticed a jar in the center of the table.  It was a washed out glass jam jar with a hole chopped into the top of the metal cap in order to slip coins into it. It had a label on it, “Momma’s Mink Fund” and I could see a few coins in it.  Magically, coins started to mount in the bottom of it and occasionally we saw folding money, too. When it was full, it was emptied and put on the table again to be filled.  It was our family’s inside joke. 

         Mom eventually got her mink by the time I was a teenager.  Autumn Haze was the color and her name was embroidered on the inside lining so that she wouldn’t lose it if misplaced at a restaurant. The color was soft and went well with her hair.  She didn’t wear it often.  It was cherished, it was soft, and it was an “event” when Mom brought it out to wear it.  “Momm’a Mink” we would say with a smile. She wore it well.

ACT THREE:

         I didn’t have a doubt in my mind when I got the call that Mom had died as to what Mom would wear on her last big occasion – the wake and the funeral.  Mom had already set aside her favorite clothes, jewelry and even her shoes for the inevitable day, with specific instructions.

         I believe I mentioned it briefly to my brother, but it didn’t matter if he wanted to go along with the plan or not.  Mom was going to have her Autumn Haze Mink Stole wrapped around her shoulders.  

         She wore it well.