The moment I knew …

The moment I knew the story of prune juice was in some ways tragic, came after my father died.  When I realized perhaps that I would never hear this story again, as I had every year for most of my adult life – every Thanksgiving.

Dinner finished, we would all clear our plates, banishing the carcass of the turkey, the dried remnants of green bean casserole, and the white dish, now empty, of sweet potato soufflé, scraped so clean that if put on the wrong side of the sink, it might not get washed at all.  Then we’d regather for pie – pumpkin and pecan – homemade, with Cool Whip straight from the tub.  We’d bring our decaf coffee, tea, port, or wine and sit again to listen to my father tell the story of prune juice.

It happened when my dad was at school in Texas, recently from Mexico.  Thirsty at the bus stop, he’d been given enough change to buy the only beverage available.  A 12-ounce can of prune juice.  He was still thirsty and by some miracle, enough change appeared for him to buy another can.  And another.  And another.  Yes, 48 ounces of prune juice, while waiting for a bus that would never come.

By now, halfway through our pie and coffee, everyone including my dad would be laughing and cringing, as one of us would ask, “what comes next?”  What does come next, on a three-mile walk back to school with 48 ounces of prune juice along for the journey?  What indeed.

My dad would describe the in-town hotel washroom, the abandoned derelict house, and even a dormitory bathroom that would never be the same.  

It’s a funny thing… If this had happened to me, I’d probably never touch the stuff again.  Yet as I look back on the many years of this story, abdominals cramped from laughing (not prune juice) I recall that as long as I can remember, there was always a giant bottle of prune juice in our fridge.