NOTES FROM CAPTIVITY: JELLO

Woke last night to thoughts of Jello

What’s trapped in there, I laid and wondered

Started humming a song about Bill Cosby’s shoes

Ain’t it funny how that gelatin moves 

Weird food, Weird food

(Excerpted from a 1930s Hobo Train Song, from Bob Seger’s Hobo Chronicles )

I guess if we were paying attention as kids, we would have recognized Jello as the precursor of today’s hotly charged partisan climate. Much like we read about family Thanksgiving dinners ruined by Trump-Clinton arguments, so were ours destroyed by Jello wars.

The sides were clear: What the hell is that and why do we need it? vs. There’s always room for Jello, its fun food!

My Aunt would bring the Jello (and celery stuffed with spray cheese – she was a terrific cook), and terrified us kids by suspending things inside, such as pears, cherries and the occasional goldfish – a child of the Depression, she let nothing go to waste.

But lack of flavor aside, Jello had serious political overtones.

Adam, my paternal Grandfather, who I recently learned was a deposed Lithuanian Archduke, lined up as pro-Jello. Not so much because he liked it – though one year he got the goldfish, which was supposed to bring good fortune – but because he saw it as a sign of America’s bounty, and evidence that he had made it in his new country: “Other countries are starving, and we are serving food that has no purpose! It is not even a course!”

PJ, my maternal Grandfather, who I recently learned was a land-owning capitalist, was anti-Jello, mainly because of his experience during the potato famine in Ireland, when the British forced potato flavored gelatin upon the Irish. He clearly saw it as a sign of oppression, but quietly had seconds the year my Aunt added Guiness to the recipe. He also believed Jello to be the “Democrat’s political grease”, and was convinced the Jello interests paid off FDR to utilize it as building material during the New Deal. He pointed to it as the first example of “Fake Liberal News”, when the NY Times portrayed dissolving Jello dams as a chance for new swimming holes in rural America. And Hiroshama was ultimately bombed twice, as the “Little Boy Jello bomb” did minimal damage and was enjoyed by the locals with their sushi.

Not surprisingly, heavy Holiday drinking made things worse, and louder. Taunts like: Bolshevik!, Mick! and Misogynist! were hurled freely (I didn’t know I was that last thing until ’16). But then it made things better, when the Grandfathers would dissolve in laughter at the way the Jello jiggled!! And laughed even harder when they realized the goldfish was still alive. And of course, they heartily agreed that Jello shots brought us closer to Jesus.

There may have been other foods that were more divisive – I’ve always heard Dukes vs. Hellmans started the Hatfield-McCoy feud, that the 4^th Musketeer resigned over the bar’s description as ‘fluffy’ whipped nougat – thinking  It made him sound soft – and the wreckage caused by caramel vs. butterscotch is still being protested in Portland, but Jello was much more personal for me.

I will wait for another day to write about my Grandfather’s debate over ketchup vs. mustard on hot dogs. Not sure even therapy will ever resolve that one…