The Green Beans of Doom

The Green Beans of Doom

The time had come for Arthur to meet the mother-in-law, Edna. Though I was only five at the time, I knew even then that the meeting of this small, hairy, bespectacled Jewish lawyer from New York and a stocky, hard-eyed, Protestant farm woman in Missouri was not likely to go well. But things never went well with Edna. Frankly, she terrified me. 

I might have pitied Arthur, but he was a butt-head because he was a stepfather. I was already teased just for having such a thing in 1955. So I sulked in the backseat as we made the three-day drive to Missouri, in a beat-up station wagon that only broke down once, for a change. Mom fretted. Arthur told horrendous puns. I counted red cars and catalogued license plates. 

We arrived in time for a large family dinner – large not only in terms of the number of family members present, and the immense quantity of food, but also due to the physical size of those farm-raised family members. Since Arthur was a lawyer, maybe he recognized that he was sitting before a jury, but not one that was a jury of his peers. 

We were seated at our family heirloom table, adorned with Edna’s very best hand-stitched linens, porcelain, sterling silver and crystal glassware going back for generations. I knew right then that my grandmother would have proudly, perhaps too proudly, prepared a feast rivaling Thanksgiving, in August.  All her specialties were going to appear, and it was going to be a massive display.  I thought maybe I should have wished Arthur luck but… stepfather.

Briefly retreating to the kitchen, she first brought out a glistening ham sitting on her best silver platter, followed by a mountain of fried chicken in a deep porcelain bowl trimmed with gold-leaf. Another trip featured mashed potatoes laden with butter and cream resting in great-great grandmother’s hand-painted porcelain bowl. Soon we witnessed the arrival of sweet corn slathered in butter, sugar snap peas swimming in cream sauce, Jello salad with shredded cabbage and carrots, deep red sliced tomatoes likely picked that morning, pickled beets, biscuits, corn bread, and an array of hand-canned jellies and jams. But I knew that she had, as always, saved her best for last: her famous green beans, cooked within an inch of their life to a dark khaki green, and steeped in a smoky ham-hock broth. It was understood that this was her piece de resistance.

As she arrived for her grand finale and set the beans on the table, resting of course within her very finest bowl, she said, as she always did in her fake, self-deprecating voice “Well, I’m afraid they didn’t quite turn out this time.” The required response was “Oh no, they look wonderful… Perfect… etc.”  

Arthur, however, blurted out ahead of us, “Well… ha ha… better luck next time!”  Silence. Shock. All eyes fixed upon this little hairy man from New York. He was doomed.