What Rhymes With Duck?

Seventy-five, the diamond jubilee, 3/4 of a century, milestone. Today the number 75 belongs to my mom. She was born on this day in 1939. I often joke that I can remember my mother's age because she was born the same year that "The Wizard of Oz" (my all time favorite movie) and "Gone with the Wind" were released. What stellar films to share your birth year with, but I digress. My mother was born Peggy Anne Meintel to Margaret Chapman Oliver and Alfred John Meintel. She was their second child having an older brother, Alfred John Meintel, Jr. She grew up in Canton, OH but moved here to Richmond, VA, in her tween years to stay with my aunt as her mother was having major surgery. She would tell me stories when I was little about how she was scared to tell anyone who she was at school because her name, Meintel, was clearly German, and Germans weren't the most popular in America in the early 1940's. My mom was a teenager right smack dab in the middle of the 1950's, a decade my generation glamorized with musicals like "Grease" and the television show, Happy Days. From the pictures I have seen of my mom at that time, I fancy her a bit of a rebel. She didn't have the high pony tail like every other girl, she had a ducktail. She went away to school for her Junior and Senior year to PEACE college in Raleigh, NC. All the pictures I've seen of her, she was a beauty, and still is for that matter. Fast forward a bit. In the late 50's she was working for a company called National Cash Register or NCR for short, and one of the cash register repairmen fell for her. That man was my dad, Ralph Jackson Moore. In 1960 they were married, and that proved to be no easy task as they had both had previous marriages and many pastors refused to marry them. What a difference 54 years make, huh? In two years they had my sister, Jenna, and I came along on Halloween day in 1963.
So, if you ask my sister, she thinks I'm a freak because I remember things in major detail, sometimes down to what I'm wearing. I remember a lot of things about my mom from my very early childhood, as early as age 3. I remember driving down to Florida in our brown station wagon, me and my sister laying down and sleeping in the back as we left mega early in the morning. We stopped at some restaurant to have breakfast, and I have a memory clear as day of my mother sitting me on the back of the open tailgate of the station wagon changing me from my pajamas into a Peanuts White sweatshirt, a pair of dungarees, as she called them, translation: blue jeans, and a sailor hat with the brim turned down. I remember her always having spiced apple rings at Christmas dinner because I liked those. She sang to me a lot when I was little. The song that really stands out to me, oddly, is Here Comes Santa Claus. She always put the tree up and decorated it on Christmas Eve, and she was a great cook! We spent most weekends with my grandparents, and I can remember coming home on Sunday nights and taking in the smells that were wafting out of the kitchen of whatever she had cooked for her and my dad. My favorite? Hamburgers, gravy and rice. I had those leftovers many a Monday morning for breakfast. One of my absolute favorite memories involving me and my mom is, ironically, not the best situation for me, but it's one of those, we'll look back on this and laugh one day kind of memories. I was about 7 years old, and my mom, my sister and I, were shopping at the A&P, a grocery store in our neighborhood. We were coming down the dairy aisle, and I asked Mom if she would buy me some canned whipped cream. She said no. I trailed along behind my mother and sister making up my own cuss words. Now, I must insert here that my family did not use cuss words, I had only heard the occasional damn, and my mother's personal favorite when things weren't going right, hell's bells, but none of the biggies! I decided this day to make up words that rhymed with duck. You see where this is going, right? "Duck! Muck! F**k!" My mother wheeled around so fast, and I knew from the look on her face that I was in big trouble, but I had no idea what I'd done. Of course her first inclination was to ask, "What did you say?" So, of course, I repeated it right there in the aisle of the A&P right next to the Hostess snack cakes. I don't remember a whole lot immediately after that, but I do remember when my dad got home, my mom had to write the word down to tell my father what I had said. They swore I heard it from someone, but I truly had just picked the wrong letter combination.
In spite of my raucous language, my mother decided to keep me around, and we had many, many years of great memories. She has been there for me in some of the most difficult times in my life. She was the best Grandma my girls could ever have, and there are too many valuable things to name that she has taught me, and I will forever be grateful. Happy Birthday, Mom! Have a duckin' great day!