Bottlecaps & Birthday Cake


Dad collected a bunch of bottle caps. Some came from mom's coke bottles and some came from the store. You see, dad could go down to the store, open the big cooler (like a huge-sized ice chest), grab a bottle, pay the nickel for it, open with the bottle opener built-in to the outside of the chest and sit and visit with the other neighborhood men sitting around doing the same thing. I think he asked the store owner if he could empty and take home the bottle caps.

See, he had devised a plan to satisfy a need the family had, a want to not be wasteful/to show how clever and smart he was and to be unique (weird) in another way. Once he had as many as he thought he needed he set them out in a rectangle pattern and nailed each one down (smooth side down). This made a door mat you could wipe the mud off your feet. Worked great when we had rainy weather AND if you had something on your feet. I used to have to jump a big jump to avoid it with my barefeet!

It was somebody's birthday and mom was sick (could have been pregnancy-Chipper-or could have been her gall bladder acting up) so dad baked a cake. They didn't have cake mixes back then. You made it from scratch. No-not the chicken feed for baby chickens (mash aka scratch) but actually measuring the individual ingredients and mixing them in the bowl. Then pouring the batter in the round cake pans and baking it.

Dad wasn't precise in his measurements (couldn't see a reason to be) AND he over baked the cake (polite way of saying burned it). Nobody wanted it. So he got the rock hard platters out of the cake pans and tossed them out to the dog to eat. They bounced. The dog wouldn't touch them (smart dog!).

One other brief memory about Louisville. The Ohio river flooded. Our home was located between two streets of different elevations. Out the back door you went downhill to the sidewalk and street. Out the front door it was fairly level with the street. I remember I wasn't allowed to go out the back and play in the water even though the neighbor kids could. Mom explained that we hadn't had our immunizations and so the health risks were too great. It was funny/odd to me simply because I didn't really want to go play in the water.

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