Too much salt in the Apple Pie

My greatest fear in life is baking an apple pie and using too much salt. I know that sounds ridiculous to most people but let me explain.

When I was a wee lad we used to visit my grandparents, my mother’s parents. To me they were Mother and Dada. Da for father is an ancient word found throughout the Indo-European language family. Dada can be used for father but also for father’s father or grandfather. Mother is simpler. Mother in Gaelic is Máthair close enough with accent as to be the same word. Me Dada was an unpleasant man of caloric temperament (I grow more like him as I get older) but this is not his story. This is about Mother.

Mother was born Honora Murray in the US. I never knew her parents who were born in the Auld Sod; Ireland. Mother was a tiny woman with a big heart but with an understated audacity that stood her well married to Tom Conrad as she was. She raised her 5 daughters Nancy, Mae, Kay, Joan (my mother) and Marge, and son Tom. Among her many talents was cooking and baking. I did not always understand her cooking. For example why in the world would you ever cook a Pot Roast when Prime Rib tasted better? I was more than a bit spoiled and I never really understood the whys and wherefores until I had a family. Dada never made much money but the family got by due in large part to Mother’s tenacity.

Life in the depression years was not easy but not nearly as bad as some had it. Dada never lost his job at the Marvin during the depression but he was cut back to two or three days a week which was worse than it sounds since full time was based on a six day week. To make ends meet Mother sold “foundations” door to door. By foundations I do not mean those that a house might be set upon but rather foundations was the polite term for woman’s undergarments. They survived until the onset of WWII when things got good again and the economy rebounded There was work for all who would take it in factories that were humming along on orders mostly for the war. Nancy, Mae and Kay went off to work in the war factories and that was the tipping point of the family fortunes. The older three girls each bought war bonds with every pay and faithfully sent them home. The younger two my Mom and Marge were too young.

By that point the family was living in a rented house on Henry Street in North Scranton.  Mother learned that the owner was losing the house and it was going up at a Judicial Tax Sale. Off Mother went to the sale and this was an audacious move for a married woman at that time to make that move without even telling her husband. At the sale a shady lawyer relative of the owner was trying to pull a fast one. He had let the taxes go and then sent a proxy to the sale to buy the house for a song. He did not go himself because he did not want anyone to know that he had engineered this misfortune to fleece an elderly woman out of her real estate. But not anticipating another bidder the lawyer only gave his man $1,100. Mother took the house for about 1200 dollars which she paid in War Bonds. That night when Dada got home from work and asked how was her day he sternly rebuked her and told her to stop her foolishness when she said that she bought the house. He would not believe she bought the house until she showed him the paperwork.

Mother would bake for us and I remember a magnificent Apple Pie. The crust was perfect; golden grown and light and flaky.  So there in a large family gather the pie was cut and served. Almost instantly someone said “Don’t eat it”. It turned out that she had switched the proportions of salt and sugar. Two cups sugar became two cups salt and a pinch of sugar. The pie was not important, we loved Mother. What was important was that this was to me the first clue something was wrong. I believe the proper term is Early Onset Dementia which may have been Alzheimer’s disease.

A strong vital dynamic woman devolved into a scared child who would periodically wander off trying to get home to her mother and father.

Last night I made an embarrassing mistake. No one died but it makes me wonder how could I screw up. Is this my salt in the pie? Do I have dementia looming on my horizon? Will I become that doddering old man who wanders off that we hear about on the news? 

I don't fear death but living scares me to no end. 

How much of this is true? I have no idea but it is the way I remember it. All legends even personal legends are more about how they are remembered then exactly what really happened. To any of my kin who want to expound or clarify send you comments along. That is if I have not wandered off in a non compos mentis fog by that time.