Glenna Stearman Park, Transitions in Our Lives: Cooking

Glenna Stearman Park

Early marriage was clearly an adventure! I had no idea how to cook, and I barely had the discipline to keep the dishes done. We were at Wright Patterson AF Base in Ohio. Joel and I met at Wichita State. He is two years older than I, but did a five-year degree in aero engineering. His first job was to go to graduate school at the Air Force Institute of Technology. I graduated with a degree in painting and English. The biggest job for us was to learn how to live on 1st Lieutenant’s pay, $350 a month. Joel’s brother and another guy followed us to Ohio with a car full of wedding gifts.

Our first night in the apartment, I decided to try making lasagna. Everything went well, but the recipe called for a “pinch” of Cayenne pepper. I thought it would be better to use a heaping small measuring spoon. It looked good and had a nice strong fragrance. With a red wine that lasagne tasted good. It had a bit of fire, but we all went to bed, and the guys got up early and drove back to Kansas. Unfortunately, my dinner blew out our insides all the next day. In the evening we got a phone call from Joel’s brother telling us they had to make pit stops all day, and they were never going to eat my cooking again. I felt bad for all four of us, but then also had fits of laughter over how my first meal would forever be a family joke and story. One of my Christmas gifts from Joel that year was the iconic cookbook, Joy of Cooking.

Without planning it, much of my married life has been great comedy. My boys grew up swearing that I used the smoke alarm as a cooking timer. Many years later my sister, a PhD neuro-geneticist, explained that cooking was chemistry. I truly had never thought of it that way, but I laughed and told her how the chemistry teacher called me aside and said he would sign the “drop” papers for me in Chemistry. He very kindly told me that if I stayed in class that I had a solid “F.” My older brother and sister were straight A students.

After burning the Christmas turkey a few years ago, my grand children have ban me from holiday cooking. I took a “little nap” while baking the bird and woke up to a panicked household of grandchildren trying to figure what sauce would make the dry bird edible. My smart older sister admitted that she had once cooked a goose with all its stuffing still wrapped in paper INSIDE the bird, which was not the correct method. 

Editor’s Note: Glenna’s story was first published as a comment on Diane Zinn’s story, “Summer 1964: Transitions in Our Lives.”  Diane’s story remembers difficulties of family budgeting in 1964.