Sweet Pickles

For those of you who do not know, My family roots are in Danville, Va. My grandparents live there and my great-grandparents lived there before them.

Anyway, my grandfather had 11 siblings and 4 still live in Danville on the same street right next to each other.

His youngest sister, my Great-Aunt Sue, is normally a very good cook. Her yeast rolls, for instance, taste storebought and her cakes are great. But her pickles....

A few months ago, I decided to go through the refridgerator and organize it. I admit, the fridge was in desperate need of help. I found about a half of a loaf of moldy bread, a very hairy tomato, and a pair of sweet potatoes.

Green sweet potatoes.

But the last ( and most interesting) thing that I found was a small tupperware.

The tupperware was slightly green colored, and so foggy that you couldn't see what was inside without opening it. The lid was also sticky...

Anyway, Mom said to keep it because dear Aunt Sue had given it to us around...oh...two years ago.

Pickles will keep for forever, you know.

Two months later my younger brother Jeremy went on one of his 'health streaks'.

Definition: Deny any kind of sugar or fat during a meal so that you can eat more sugar or fat later in the afternoon.

Everyonce in a while, when Jeremy goes on his 'health streaks' he gets a craving for pickles. Usually he eats the plain old storebought pickles because they only contain 30 calories per pickle.

Sounds unhealthy to me.

But then, we ran out of storebought pickles. But Alas, Jeremy wanted one. So he dug into the fridge and unearthed the green, slightly sticky tupperware from Aunt Sue. That was his first mistake.

The second mistake was opening it.

Immediately, the entire kitchen was filled with a strong, sickly-sweet smell. I have never smelled a corpse, but if I ever do I will not be surprised if it smells like sweet pickles.

Like I said, the tupperware was green. And for a very good reason. The pickles were cut into thin strips that looked like moldy carrots. The liquid(or kerosene) that surrounded the pickles in the tupperware was thick, cloudy and light green. Not altogether the most appetizing thing that I have ever seen.

Jeremy's third mistake was eating one.

I can see it now: the poor, unfortunate fork slowly being lowered to the rim of the tupperware, gazing into the thick green juice. It's too bad that Forks cannot talk, because if they could I am quite sure that the untensil would have been screaming out to jeremy to save him from the cucumbers that smelled like death.

Did I mention that the juice was thick? It was. Thick as bubblegum cough medicine and five times as nasty.

I never did like bubble gum cough medicine. The stuff is grainy enough to chew and it sticks in your throat for half an hour.

Somehow, Jeremy had convinced my other brother, Timothy, to "be a man" and try one as well. Phrases like "Be a country boy" and "Stick together" were common.

Anyway, they both decided that since Jeremy was the oldest, Jeremy would be the first to take the plunge. He grimaced painfully and lifted the fork to his mouth and retracted it just as fast. The stuff really did smell like death. When he had gathered up his courage yet again(which took a while), he bit off a piece of the pickle before he could change his mind.

Now, generally Jeremy isn't much of an actor, but I have to admit, he did a humdinger of a job on this one. When the marinated cucumber entered the vast cavity of his mouth he didn't move a muscle. He actually chewed it up and swallowed it without flinching.

Honestly, part of that was because he wanted to see Tim's reaction to the cuke. Timothy reluctantly took a bite, scrunched up his face, and spit the pickle back out before you had time to say Who's-your-uncle.

'Sweet Pickles' they were called. The name was not an exaggeration. Those pickles were so sweet that each one must have been positively steeped in sugar syrup for a week. When you take that and add storage in a fridge for two years, well now, that is a pickle.

We begged mom to let us throw the pickles away once and for all, but no sir! Wasting is a sin.

You know; I doubt that even people in Haiti would have eaten those Sugar Soakers.

Eventually we got rid of the pickles(much to everyone's satisfaction).

Fortunately Aunt Sue hasn't made pickles in a very long time.

And the next time she does I'm not touching them.

Bubble gum cough medicine really is nasty.