MadMen Allusions No Illusions

No one has captured an era more effectively, more poignantly and frankly, more truthfully than the creators of ‘MadMen.’

I won’t make this into a thesis paper – even though I am tempted and could go on and on with psychological examples – but the way that children were treated back in that time slot especially resonated with me.

Consider the following conversation circa 1965 between myself and my perfectly lovely mother.

ME: “When Daddy leaves the car running, I get really scared. I know you can’t drive and I worry that the car will drive away on its own. What would happen?”

MUM: (Lighting a cigarette and snapping open the newspaper) “Don’t talk daft. Now, are you peeling the carrots?”

You will notice the distinct absence of any heartfelt “When you say, I feel …” conversations, no one-on-one explanations and certainly no therapists were consulted.

And you know what? All I wanted was a practical answer like, “Hell, we’d pull the car key out” or how about “I know where the hand brake is!” I continued to fret for YEARS about this and have since relegated it to simple childhood anxiety although truly, I was just trying to find out if ANYONE would know what to do.

It’s not that unreasonable!

Here’s another good one. I had no eating “issues” when I was young, except that I was considered a picky eater .

I now believe that what this designation really meant was that I did not enjoy the same foods as the rest of my family, such as gelatinous aspic on ham, sweetbreads, the squiggly bits in the spokes of a tomato slice or a nice tube-ridden liver that was like cutting into a resistant ‘shammy.’

Whatever the reason, my family was concerned so my dad decided that the best thing to do was to frighten me into eating better. You know, like you do.

So one night he dramatically recited and then presented to me for reference, the following poem  which has, unfortunately, stayed me with to this day:

A special shout-out to ‘poet’ Heinrich Hoffmann for this instructive tale which came with these especially horrifying illustrations. Oh, and further along in the book there was the equally dreadful “Scissor Man” who was ready to “help” with a thumb sucking habit.

Check out this guy’s nose hairs – gah!

(And, all of this, as you can imagine, was tremendously helpful to a nervous five year old …)

Ironically, I would go on to become a food writer so unlike poor Augustus I think I’ve done rather well.