Food was not abundant in my childhood. I can still tell you exactly what you would find if you looked in the refrigerator over the Port Byron Bar & Hotel in 1991.

You would primarily see the white interior of the refrigerator, plus a few items illuminated under the flickering fluorescent lights. Milk, if you were lucky… unless it was spoiled. Slices of yellow cheese, bologna or hot dogs, hot sauce for when we talked back, and maybe butter. That’s it.

In the cupboards, you might find peanut butter, chalk-flavored powdered milk, and sugar. On the counters, there was almost always cereal… and, believe it or not, the good kind. Lucky Charms or Cap’n Crunch. They were staples… but never both at the same time. And bread.

There were no family dinners except on the occasional night when Dad would order a pineapple and ham pizza with black olives. We didn’t like pineapple or black olives, but he didn’t care. Parents came first. One time he made us shark. It was well seasoned and surprisingly delicious.

No one cooked meals for my sister or me. My sister did the cooking… if there was food to cook. She would microwave the hot dogs. I would just eat them raw. I think I remember her scrambling eggs once, but I can’t be sure.

Actually… I have to correct myself. I do remember my dad making me an egg and bacon sandwich in the bar kitchen one afternoon. I don’t believe my sister lived with us at that time. He also cooked a lot for me when I was bit by a Rottweiler and had half my face torn off. But that’s another blog.

I do remember loving lunch at school. In the mornings, my sister and I would go into Dad’s bedroom and collect change from him to pay for our lunch. He would open one eye to see what concoction of clothing I had assembled that day and, if he approved, would hand us our change. I really couldn’t be trusted to dress myself. One time, I wore only a long T-shirt and a belt. I ended up getting head lice that day, so when he picked me up, he was horrified to discover I had nothing underneath my shirt.

My favorite school lunches were fish with tartar sauce and pizza. It’s very likely that was my only meal on those days, aside from a slice of cheese or bologna later in the day.

I have a specific memory of waking in the middle of the night hungry. I went to the refrigerator and got out a slice of cheese. Eating slices of cheese throughout the day was typical for me. Unwrapping it from the plastic, I bit off chunks and swallowed them whole. Then I would run the plastic across my teeth and tongue to dig out every spare bit of cheese. I had almost completed the task at hand when my father came around the corner yelling at me. He told me I should be in bed and promised me a beating in the morning.

I went to bed regretting getting up to eat. Clearly, in my seven- or eight-year-old mind, he was mad about the cheese.

The next morning, I put on two pairs of jeans and wedged a hardcover book into my backside. Pulling jeans over jeans is actually quite difficult, but I managed. I wobbled out, bowlegged, to the living room where my father sat waiting. A spatula was in his left hand because his right hand was broken and wrapped up. He had broken it on someone’s face in a bar fight. Wrestling and beating up angry drunks was part of his job as a bar owner. I thought he was as badass as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Sometimes I would even lean over the upstairs balcony to watch Dad drag an unruly drunk out of the bar… cheering him on the whole time.

“Get him, Daddy!”

When I wobbled into the living room the next morning, Dad chuckled. In his charming, playful way, he elaborately declared, “Oooookaaay… take out the book and take off one pair of jeans.”

He was thoroughly amused at my childish endeavor. After I reluctantly obeyed, he instructed me to bend over his lap, and then he hit me several times with the spatula. Each hit stung, and I cried.

Later, my father and I would put together that Melanie, my stepmother, had spanked me the night before when I wore only a thin nightgown and panties. I don’t remember why she was mad at us… but she had told my dad that she had spanked her daughter and now he had to spank me. He had never been mad at me about the cheese.

The unfortunate cause of this revelation was my mother discovering five two-inch-long bruises on my backside the next time I visited her. I had been spanked by Melanie, who most likely caused the bruising, and then spanked again by my dad the next morning. Having had jeans on, neither of us had any idea I was already bruised. I was too young to know the difference.

When my mom said my dad did it, I didn’t question her. She called the police, and they sent child protective services, who took photographs of my backside. This would eventually play a role in my dad giving up custody of me.

When we all moved out of the bar and into a house up the road… we had more food. We had family dinners, too.

A little backstory… Melanie was a woman Dad had known for only two weeks. He brought her home as his wife the first time I met her. She had two kids: a girl my age, Samantha, and a younger boy named Shane. They were brats, in my opinion, and Melanie was an evil stepmother.

My dad always said my sister and I drove off all of his girlfriends, but I only remember him picking some sorry women. There was one we both loved, Nancy. But I’ll share more about her in another blog.

Melanie shamed me a lot for eating. She snorted at me when I ate. Dad decided to copy her. Eventually, they both snorted at me. I wasn’t even overweight. I think she just hated me and saw me as competition for my dad’s love.

For all his faults, my dad did want to be a good father and loved me very much. He just did a terrible job at it.

More than once, Melanie called me Miss Piggy. I remember feeling tremendous guilt for being hungry or desiring food. At Pizza Hut one time, I guess I was eyeing a big slice of cheesy pizza while eating the piece I had, and Melanie made a big scene for the whole table. She laughed at me and pushed the slice I had been eyeing onto my plate and declared how I just couldn’t keep my eyes off of it.

I was such a piggy.

“Oink, oink.”

More food stories to come.