Posted by Loulou on Aug 11, 2013 | 3 comments

One of the lovely George Carlson drawings

Sometimes my anthros talk about their childhoods and mama, in particular, has never forgotten Howard Garis’s Uncle Wigglily books and the touching and tender George Carson drawings of that famous Uncle and his adventures and characters he meets along the way.

Mama says that she learned to eat vegetables, lettuce specifically, because her wise and wonderful mother used to make her “mouse roly polys” , which were large leaves of lettuce spread with Durkee’s dressing or her mama’s French dressing and then rolled up and speared with a toothpick. Mama’s mama said that the owl in Uncle Wiggily would have eaten them but the little mice were saved by the Uncle, naturally. I like this guy—he was saving those mice for ME, even though I have only cornered one and that was it. Plus I think mama’s mama made up that story to get her to eat greens.

Mama even took a waxed paper roll out the kitchen when she was  eight years old or so and tried to make a house out in the yard that would keep out the rain, just as Uncle Wiggily did when he was caught in a downpour. But guess what? It didn’t hold water, haha.

In those Uncle Wiggily days, mama ate a lot of carrots, that’s for sure. Funny how books can be such food themselves and mama eats one about every week, when she has time, sometimes reading two at a time, one out loud to papa and the other to herself. Today she cried over the ending of “Fin and Lady”—I think there was a pretty nice doggie in that book, so it was okay to read it, but I still like the books she reads that have cats in them. For example, there’s a mystery writer whose character is always giving her kitty leftover yogurt or ice cream and other treats, especially when she herself is feeling thwarted or rejected or frustrated (more on that lady when I find where I put my list of the books I read over mama’s shoulder).

And when she reads Donna Leon, she cooks like a madwoman, lucky for me with a lot of Venetian squid and fish things. The same thing happened with Shogun and Tai Pan, James Clavell’s brilliant novels—Japanese and Chinese food were on the menu for weeks, and papa was in hog heaven, so to speak.

But this Uncle Wiggler seems to have been a real turning point in mama’s life. She says she wanted to do everything herself and learn survival techniques and search for her fortune and try to help others and have an adventuresome life.

And so she has.

I’m her latest adventure…the best of all, next to papa.