[He writes this before going to another doctor’s appointment.]
When I was a boy, my parents had to “entertain” from time to time. This meant having people over who weren’t friends or family, or even anyone they liked very much. Mostly they were persons whom my mother thought it useful to impress: persons who could give Dad a leg up in his career at the Ford plant.
When you “entertain,” you have to provide adult beverages. Some of these corporate not-quite big shots drank like fish. So my mother kept a well-stocked liquor cabinet for these occasions.
In our kitchen we had overhead cabinets, handy to both stove and sink. Sometimes there were special snacks up there–a box of Merri-Mints, say–and if I could climb onto the counter without getting caught, I could sneak a treat.
That was where they kept the Frothee.
What’s that? Well, it was for putting an artificial foamy head on a drink. Somehow it never made it to the liquor cabinet.
Year after year stood the jar of Frothee in the cabinet, like an ancient Roman household shrine. It never moved. No one ever used it. For all I know, it may still be there in the cabinet today… having stood there, now, for seventy years.
Ah, Frothee! Relic of a bygone time–my bygone time, at any rate.
But there ain’t no going back, is there?