Stories from the Stringam Family Ranches of Southern Alberta

From the 50s and 60s to today . . .



Saturday, July 25, 2015

Breakfast Forts

Breakfast.
The most – interesting – meal of the day.
Mom believed in beginning the day with a good, hot, hearty meal.
Bacon. Sausage. Eggs. Pancakes. Waffles. Ham. Fruit. Muffins. Fresh bread. Cinnamon buns. French toast.
A breakfast milkshake that included eggs and fruit. And occasionally, chocolate.
She mixed and matched.
And pure deliciousness emerged.
But sometimes, she allowed us kids to graze.
Okay, her version of grazing was to set out a plethora of cold cereal boxes and let us take our pick.
Funny how kids accustomed to ‘home-cooked’ can think ‘store-bought’ is a real treat.
But we did.
We happily selected and poured and sugared and crunched.
Except for big brother George.
He did all of that . . . and built a fort.
His breakfast fort.
And, because he did it, and made it look like fun, I had to do it too.
Did you know it’s possible to sit at the same table with someone and never even catch a glimpse of them?
Well it is.
With a little ingenuity.
And a lot of cereal boxes.
George would set a large cereal box on either side of his bowl. Then add a third to connect the first two.
Voila!
Cereal box fort.
Private and exclusive.
One could eat one’s bowl of awesomeness and never even know that one had breakfast companions.
Well, until Mom came, demolished one’s fort with her genius for quick and effective relocation and a, “Stop doing that, you two. We need to see each other’s bright and smiling faces in the morning!”
To which George would inevitably reply, "My face isn't bright and smiling!"
Yeah. Cereal boxes. They can hide so much.

13 comments:

  1. I'm sorry. I stopped at "home-made cinnamon buns." HOME-MADE. Pass them, please!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I put on five pounds just reading about your mom's cooking :)

    My kids used to do that thing with the boxes, too, just to drive each other crazy!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah. Mom's cooking was pretty much amazing. Sigh.
      What is it with kids and cereal boxes?!

      Delete
  3. Cardboard cereal or you mama's breakfasts? What a hard decision. I know which I would choose now, and I know which I would have chosen then. We wouldn't have been allowed to build those forts. But would have loved them...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I read this and think about how 'special' it was to have cereal. Now? Pass the cinnamon buns! :)

      Delete
  4. And today, more than 50 years later, my morning face STILL isn't bright and smiling...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I like your mum's idea of breakfast, especially the cinnamon buns. Yum. My kids did the same with the cereal boxes, but differently. They'd line the boxes across the table and then have one in front of them so the table was essentially quartered.

    ReplyDelete
  6. My breakfast memory is of my mother at the stove on cold winter mornings, stirring porridge and saying "this will stick to your ribs today." I'm not sure we ever had enough cereal boxes at one time to create a fort. Love this story!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My mom used to say that as well! I love porridge. Never could quite figure out how to stick it to my ribs though . . .

      Delete
  7. Haha! I used to do the same thing, but I did it to keep my 4 brothers from stealing my breakfast!

    ReplyDelete

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