Making Biscuits

We seldom spent a weekend at home when I was growing up. My father played music in a band, and they had gigs on Fridays or Saturdays or sometimes both nights.

My mother seldom stayed home with us. She was like Lucy Ricardo, always wanting to be near my father and eventually edging her way up on the stage where she sang backup vocals on a few songs and beat on a tambourine.

Our maternal grandparents usually kept us on the weekends. We spent either one or both nights with them. I later found out my mother paid them to keep us, but I didn't know that at the time. I just knew we spent a lot of time at Grandma's house. Grandpa was not around us much; he worked and on the weekends, he repaired television sets in his workshop in the basement.

But occasionally my grandparents could not have us over, for whatever reason. The teenager up the road, Melinda, kept us sometimes. While it was fine for me to keep my brother for a few hours after school, it was not ok for us to be alone from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m., at least not until after I turned 12.

One night Melinda kept us and she was still there the next morning. My parents apparently arrived home very late, and she slept on the couch. When I got up, she suggested we fix breakfast for everyone.

As we all know, I don't like to cook.

At any rate, we set about preparing breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits, etc. Melinda handed me the biscuit batter and told me to mix it. (I have no idea if this was something she mixed up or if it was Bisquick. Probably Bisquick, if it was around back then.)

Now I had helped my mother and grandmother make cakes, brownies, and cookies. Batter is supposed to be smooth, right? So I beat on that biscuit batter until I had every lump out.

Upon removing them from the oven, Melinda discovered that we had not biscuits, but something more akin to hard tack. By this time, my mother was up and I remember everyone laughing at my hard, flat biscuits.

My mother said I beat the rise out of them.

She threw them in the trash.

I buy frozen biscuits now, or a can of Pillsbury biscuits. I can heat the oven and cook them.

I don't have to worry about anything but burning them.