Since we lived in the projects and were on welfare, got food stamps, and had Medicaid, I was pretty clueless as to how it all came in and what it went out for. All I knew was the at the first of the month we ate like kings and Mom was a little less tense than she would be at the end of the month when things were really tight. I only remember her saying something to us one about our lack of money once, when I asked why didn't we have any of the "good" cereal left, I was probably referring to the lack of sugary sweet Quisp or Cap'n Crunch, she said we were out because we kids had ate it all and she couldn't afford to buy anything but the cheap-o store brand. Somehow she ran the house and paid all the bills and took care of five rambunctious kids and my Dad, when he was not in the mental hospital that is.
When things got extra tight I remember going to eat at Grandma's house a bunch of times, she only lived a few blocks from us but to me it seemed like it was a world away because she didn't live in the projects. Also there were times when my Uncle Bob would take us kids out and also my Uncle Jerry would as well, I suspect they did it at her behest more to save her sanity than to make sure that we'd be fed. And there would be the odd time when we'd be sent off to my Aunt Carol's house for supper or to spend the night, this happened most of the time around the end of the month when the food stamps had run out and Mom's wallet was thin from lack of funds.
I didn't know I was missing out on anything, on one level I knew other people had more money and a better looking house than we did but I just figured everyone ate the same kinds of stuff we did, lots of processed foods, cheese pizzas, hot dogs wrapped in slices of white bread, store brand Twinkies, canned pudding, and other stuff that would put a scare into a modern day nutritionist. Mom kept our ship afloat but she couldn't cook worth a damn. I was almost 10 before I had a salad and I remember asking my cousins what this magical thing called "steak" was.
Mom kept our financial problems close to her vest and she kept good food out of our reach because she didn't have the knack for cooking so we ate a lot of crap food. Her one big dish was an abomination called "city chicken." Dad, when he was home and lucid, would ask, "What's for dinner?" Then I'd hear those words that chilled me to my little core, "City chicken." I hated that shit with a passion, I hated it almost as much as I hated canned asparagus, beets, cooked carrots, and Veg-All. It was many years before I found out what "city chicken" was, it turned out it was veal that was cut into chunks, rolled in bread crumbs, shoved onto skewers, and then fried with in an inch of it's life. Upon hearing that we'd be having city chicken yet again dad would say, "Ohh, goody!" And when I heard him say that I would wish that he were back in the hospital getting some Edison medicine (electro-shock treatment) or having a Coke with a Thorazine chaser. I loved my Mom and my Dad but city chicken night after night was cruel and unusual punishment for crimes I had no idea that I even committed.
But things changed all the way around for me when Mom passed away and we got sent to live with Aunt Rageaholic and Uncle Adultery.
They were more open about money but in a nutty way. They both were kids when the Great Depression hit and they both grew up dirt poor and it affected them adversely, my aunt more so than my uncle. She was, and still is, the type of person who never has enough money and there is always, always, always a financial crisis in her life. She would bitch and moan about not having enough money when I knew damn well she had cash in her purse and money in the bank, but it was never enough. She got money for being our parental guardian but she never told us about it, she would just tell us that we were one step out of the poor house and that we were lucky to have a roof over our ungrateful heads.
After my mother was killed on the operating table my mentally ill father was the only one in the family to have the presence of mind to sue the doctors and the hospital where she died. The case dragged on for years and no one knew about it until one day we got a call to come back up north, we had been moved south by this time, the mid 1970's, so we could all sign the settlement and us kids could collect our share of the malpractice settlement. We went back to Detroit, and all the way up Aunt Rageholic bitched about how much the trip was costing her, and we signed the papers and we got our money.
All of us kids, my two brothers and my sister and I, got $10,000. My Dad got the same amount as well. I was under 18 at the time and my money was supposed to be put into the bank for safekeeping. But things didn't turn out that way. My nutty angry aunt decided she needed my money to keep her failing restaurant afloat so she took it. I got to spend maybe $500 dollars of it, the rest vanished in the black hole of her soon to be belly up restaurant. Had I had that money I would not have had to take out any student loans when I got to college but alas the best laid plans oft go astray when one is related to a greedy woman who has no compunction about taking a minor's money from a malpractice suit and spending it on a failing business.
But before all that happened I learned from Aunt Rageaholic about the most expensive thing in the world. She taught me about this thing in small doses. As a way to justify not letting us eat an extra slice of bacon she'd say, "No, you can't have more bacon because pound for pound it's more expensive than fee-lay min-yon. One slice of bacon is enough for you." When we'd ask for more than a thimbleful of orange juice at breakfast she deny us by saying, "Ounce for ounce orange juice is more expensive than fee-lay min-yon." If we wanted to go to McDonald's while out and about in the city she say, "Oh no. Fast food is more expensive than fee-lay min-yon."
With the limited background I had, I had no idea what fee-lay min-yon was. I figured it was like diamonds or gold or something. I figured it had to be the most precious, most expensive thing in the world if it my aunt kept going on about it. After all she knew way more than I did about money than I did. I figured there had to be fee-lay min-yon mines somewhere and that it was traded on the stock exchange and maybe it even backed our currency like gold did at one point.
One rare night when I was a teenager I got to stay over at a friend's house and he and I were talking before we went to sleep. We chatted about girls, Spiderman comic books, girls, wrasslers, school, girls, cars, girls, and then we got onto the subject of what kind of house would we live in when we finally became rich and famous. He said he'd live in a castle like the royal family in England did and I said that I was going to live in a house made out of the most expensive thing in the world, fee-lay min-yon. My friend split his sides laughing at me and when I asked why he was laughing so much he said that only an idiot would live in a house made of meat.
I said fee-lay min-yon wasn't meat it was something rare and precious. He got up and told me to follow him. We walked to his parents kitchen and he reached in to their freezer and he pulled out a small cut of beef that was wrapped in bacon.
On the package it said, "Fillet Mignon." As my face got hot with embarrassment I made a silent vow to myself to be suspicious of everything that my crazy aunt said from that day forward.
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