Bay leaf and burnt sugar. My mother kept a pot going on Sundays and you could smell it from the corner before you turned onto the street. Nine of us at that table and only seven chairs, so the youngest two ate standing up. Nobody thought it was a hardship.

Dad drove us to the coast in the blue Buick with no air conditioning. We sang the whole way there and not one word on the way back.

We had one fan for the whole house and whoever got up first got to point it at their bed. I lost every single summer to my brother.