George Dawson's childhood

My brother told me this evening that a childhood friend, Pete, was coming to Louisville this summer for a visit. I have not seen Pete since about 1960. I reflected on him and wrote the following:

Funny thing about Pete; he liked his cereal soggy. He lived with his grandmother on the other side of the alley. He would come to our house each night and pour a bowl of his favorite cereal, wheaties, add sugar and milk and then place it in the refrigerator, and then leave. Early the next morning he would march right in, drag out the bowl and plop down at the breakfast table and dig into the goo.

I don’t recall why he did this but we never thought about it. We three boys had our own peculiariarities. Joe could not stand paper napkins; I could not drink a glass of milk with even a drop of water in it and Bruce -- heck forget Bruce because he was 7 years younger than I and it didn’t matter what he did.

Anyway we knew Pete’s grandmother gave him plenty to eat so needing food was not why he bothered to come 50 yards or so in the dark to make this culinary creation. Anyway she would not let him make this brown sludge mix. Perhaps there was not enough room in the refrigerator. Those old Frigidaires always looked like they could hold a lot but they couldn’t. The insulation was poor. So the company put a lot of fluff in the walls making the insides small. I guess there was no room for the bowl of swamp looking cereal that was too gross to share space with real food. I bet she wouldn’t let it sit in her cooler as something might spontaneously generate overnight.

Whatever the reason Pete was like a fourth boy in the family if only for breakfast.

Such was life at the corner of Taylor and Thornberry in the 40’s.