My father’s picnics

My father taught me how to picnic. He had a wicker hamper he had brought back from a business trip to London. It was like a small suitcase that he would fill with provisions for sandwich making and off we would go – To the beach, to the park, to the garden. We always brought our own food with us. It seemed easier that way. Later, a Skotch cooler/ grill was added to our supplies and my father would grill burgers and make s’mores for us at the beach. Posthumously, his employer published a book called The Giant Sandwich, a fictionalized account of his sandwich making.

I held on to the wicker hamper and the Skotch cooler for decades after his death, although we never used either again. I moved them two or three times around the northeast with me. The leather handle on the hamper eventually rotted and the Kooler rusted, but I kept hoping I would use them again. I never did. Finally, I let them go last year. It had been 53 years. I still have a couple of copies of The Giant Sandwich.

I tried to interest my own family in the joys of picnics with mixed results – I acquired a variety of colorful Playmate Coolers that I stocked with everything we could possibly need, from condiments to seasonings, knives, spreaders and cutting boards. We had one visitor who scoffed – “Gee, you’re like my mom”- when I produced a jar of pickles from the cooler at the beach. Mostly, my next of kin just wanted to pick up ready made sandwiches, but from time to time they would humor me, even though they thought it was a lot of work. I got a little Weber Grill for burgers and s’mores and we lost a lot of hamburger through the cooking grates, before I finally acquiesced.

I still like to pack a picnic basket and I keep a blanket and a tablecloth in the car- just in case an opportunity to picnic arises, even with a pre-made sandwich. I have one of those portable campfires in a can for S’mores, but there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for those. Still, a girl can hope:)

Thanks Daddy, for all the picnics – How I loved them and you.