I
pulled up to the Starbucks drive-through window and ordered a salted
caramel hot chocolate.
Long
silence.
Then
I realized that that might have just been a holiday flavor, so I
asked if that was the case.
SB
Barista: No. We still have it. Just without the salt.
KB:
You have the salted caramel without the salt?
SB:
Yes. Well, no. We have the drink. But it was a holiday flavor [Ah!].
But we’re out of the salt crystals that go on top.
KB:
Ooooookkkkay.
SB:
The caramel hot chocolate is the same drink, just without the salt.
KB:
Okay. I’ll have that then.
SB:
It’s the same drink once you get past the caramel topping and the
whipped cream.
KB:
Got it. I’ll have that.
***
This
reminds me of one of my and my sister’s favorite stories about our
dad. Dad had a wit that was as dry as the Sahara, and was delivered
with such flat affect that almost no one could tell for sure when he
was joking and when he was serious. (This combination of humor and
poker face continued to the end of his life, in spite of his
dementia, which threw off many a nurse involved in his care. They
would mistake his humor for confusion.)
Oh,
before I embark on the story of Daddy Mac’s hammer, I have to give
the back story that my maternal grandfather–dad’s
father-in-law–known to all as “Daddy Mac” was a revered and
larger-than-life character in our family. His sons-in-law loved him
as dearly as his three daughters did, and though Daddy Mac had died
before most of us grandkids were born, our childhood was so rife with
stories about the man–his boyhood, his humor, and his adages (which
were many) that we felt as if we’d known him. He was a venerable
person in our eyes.
Now,
cut to many years later. My sister and I, in our midteens, were
hanging out in the kitchen, which was a sure sign that there was
nothing that had to be done there, as we had a gift for making
ourselves scarce when there was work to be done, particularly in the
kitchen.
Dad
came into the kitchen from the garage (his workshop), which was just
off the kitchen. He came through, armed with the basic tools needed
to do some sort of simple DIY project somewhere in the house. We
spoke to him, and, for some reason, he held up his hammer, and he
said, “Have I ever told you that this was Daddy Mac’s hammer?”
We
were properly impressed with this bit of information and expressed an
appropriate amount of awe and respect. It was certainly believable,
as the hammer was really quite ancient-looking, and I couldn’t
remember his having had any other hammer in my lifetime. The handle,
which had obviously started out as a blonde, was now burnished to a
rich auburn by much use and “elbow grease.”
Dad
went on to tell us that Daddy Mac had given him (the oldest of the
sons-in-law, who had known Daddy Mac the longest) many of his tools
before he died, this being one of them. Well, as far as Sis and I
were concerned, this made all of dad’s tools family heirlooms, and,
again, we expressed our appreciation of this info. Dad then began to
walk past us, explaining, almost as if to himself, “Well, of
course, I had to replace the handle after it split, and then I
replace the head when one of the claws broke off. But it’s Daddy
Mac’s hammer all the way.”
By
this time, he was out of the kitchen, leaving my sister and me
looking at each other quizzically until his words sank in, and we
were left, as my dad used to say, “to ponder the advisability of it
all.”
