During the Depression a steak supper on our family table didn’t happen very often and then only through our mother’s careful food budget penny pinching. Because the general population in our Chicago neighborhood had been severely affected by the Depression, the neighborhood butcher carried only the cheaper grades of meat. From that selection, Mother bought the least expensive round steak. She would fry it, cut it into portions, one for each family member, put the pieces on a platter then set the platter in front of my father’s place at the table where our dinner plates had already been stacked. He would fork a piece of the meat onto each plate and serve it to us with a smile as if he were giving us a gift.

My brothers and I received the meat as graciously as we could but in reality we detested it. Each approximately three-inch square piece looked like a rubber heel from a man’s shoe. Holding the steak firmly with our forks we would pick up our knives and begin to saw. We sawed and sawed until we were finally able to work off a bite sized piece. With the whole family sawing at the same time, the table would actually begin to jiggle.

Once the piece was in our mouths the chewing began. We chewed and chewed. I would work each bite until I had it softened enough to swallow whole. I think two of my brothers did the same. Our youngest brother would chew his until he felt he had chewed the good out of it, then he took the mashed lump out of his mouth and placed it at the side of his plate. Our father scolded about that but it never did any good.

My brothers and I could never understand why our parents seemed to be enjoying their steak. They had to saw and chew just as hard as we did. Looking back on it I believe they were not actually enjoying the meat in their mouths but through it tasted the memory of the real thing they had been able to have before the Depression.

I don’t know when or which of us children finally had the courage to say we didn’t like steak and couldn’t we please have hamburger instead. Our parents were surprised and possibly a little hurt to find we didn’t like our steak treat but agreed we could have hamburger on steak night. The arrangement worked well. From then on steak night was a real treat for all of us. I would like to believe that Mother used the money she saved buying hamburger to buy a better cut of steak for her and our father but I have a suspicion that she didn’t. Pennies saved were sooo important then.

Mother did have one big worry about the arrangement. She always feared unexpected company would arrive at supper time and seeing her and our father eating steak while we children were having only hamburger, would think they were the kind of parents who skimped on their children’s food so they could feast.

Fortunately that never happened. How did our parents manage it? Although food in our home was always rationed and plain, except for those special steak/hamburger suppers, we were never hungry during the Depression.

Why do I remember those steak suppers so well? Is it because they were so special or that the meat was so awful or is it the picture I carry in my mind of our family seated around that big white cloth covered table struggling with our portions of the steak? Maybe my memory is the sum of it all. It certainly is one I always recall with lump-in-my-throat fondness.