Peanut Butter

Back in '86, Lee & I had been dating around 3 years, and I wanted to go to the Exposition Fair in Vancouver, Canada. Lee, having never been out of the country, agreed to accompany me. We would get to visit his sibs in Sacramento & Medford on our way up.


We got an extra rider in Marla, who was going to stay with her Aunt Karen, who had a new baby girl, Collyn.

Lee picked me up from my job, sometime in the later evening, because I worked 8 hours after I got out of school. Marla was all wrapped up in pillows & blankets. I don't remember much about the ride up to Sacramento - we got to Karen's in the early morning & went to sleep.

We spent a few days in Sacramento and then headed up to Medford. We stayed at Myrna & Doug's a bit, and then at Kraig & Nancy's place in Butte Falls. I recall very small Crystal & Jon peeking out at us in the morning, a big electricity outtage at Abby's Pizza during a sudden thunderstorm, Nancy showering me with rain left over on a tree, and slip & sliding down the hill at Myrna & Doug's.

We got up to Vancouver at night, and found our campground. It was a long drive from Medford, and Lee & I talked a lot & listened to music. But by the time we finally got to our site & started setting up, we discovered the tent we'd borrowed from Byron had been peed all over by his cat. It wouldn't have been so bad, except it was raining lightly, and it really smelled.

We decided we should sleep in the back of the Ford Escort instead. He was going to set that up. I was pretty hungry, and since I couldn't help much, I went to the little market in the campground & got some peanut butter, jam & bread. When I got back to our site, Lee was pretty frustrated. When we'd given a ride to nieces & nephews in the back of car, someone had discovered the little string pull to flip down the seat, and had somehow managed to wedge it between the back & the seat. Lee's meaty hands couldn't get it out again, and we couldn't put the seat back down to be able to use the car to sleep.

I discovered at this point that I can take Lee just fine when he's pissed off. This was a good thing, because he doesn't get all that mad very often (that I see), and when he does, I pretty much leave him alone to work it out. At this point tho, I'm right there in the car, trying to make a sandwich while he's cursing in the back seat. I kept my questions to a minimum like, "Do you want a sandwich?" I don't recall his answer - but I only made one for me.

Well, I started to make one for me. I'm working with the handle of a spoon, since I don't have a knife, and I open the lid of the peanut butter. In the dim light of the Escort's interior dome, I can see there's something on the top of the peanut butter. I hold it up, but the light is pretty dim. Is it a cockroach? Is it a beetle? What the heck is that thing? Should I go back to the market? I think I'd just gotten my stuff as they were closing for the night... I'm starving and I'm gonna eat. If it *is* a bug, it's dead anyway, so I carefully collect the peanut butter from the outer edges of the jar, and make my sandwich. It tastes fine.

Ordinarily, I'd have asked Lee to figure out what that was, but he wasn't really in the mood :/

The next morning, I opened the peanut butter jar to find out what that was.

Peanuts.

The logo of this Canadian brand of peanut butter is: Squirrel Peanut Butter - the one with the peanut on top!

*sigh*