Bliss, Remembered by Frank Deford Page B

breakfast, although one of the few tedious things about my mother was that all too often she’d go on (and on) about how she missed having scrapple for breakfast. They’d had that growing up on the Shore. “Most people don’t even have a clue what scrapple is,” she’d whine. They certainly didn’t in Missoula, Montana, or Eugene, Oregon—and, I assume, in most other places. “Just as well, I suppose,” she would then add. “I never was sure what was in it, but I think it was all the stuff that wasn’t good enough for sausage.”
    “Not good enough for sausage? I thought you shouldn’t even ask what went into sausage.”
    “Yeah, Teddy, scrapple is probably just nasty scraps, but it sure was good. We’d pour maple syrup on it.”
    “I’ve never heard of anyone putting syrup on meat.”
    “Well, we did on scrapple on the Shore, and it was delicious. For all I know, maybe they don’t even have scrapple anyplace but the Shore. All I know is, I sure do miss having a choice of scrapple for breakfast.”
    But this morning, after her scrapple-less Oregon breakfast, when she found me out in her garden, she was raring to resume reminiscing. Mom was still in a good mood from the night before, because late in the evening, when she’d despaired that NBC would never desert the teeny little heinie-less gymnasts, they’d switched to the swimming. Then, not only did Natalie Coughlin win the hundred backstroke—hooray!—but Michael Phelps also won another gold medal in something or other.
    It was a gorgeous morning in Eugene, and I’d sort of drifted off in the sun, reading the newspaper. Mom took it off my lap and turned right to the sports pages, looking for the certification in print of what she’d seen with her own eyes on TV the night before. She searched the agate. “I just can’t get over it, Teddy. The time.”
    “What time?”
    “Natalie Coughlin’s time. Just thirty-seven hundredths of a second over a minute. Remember what I told you Eleanor swam it in—a minute, sixteen and something. Imagine that. And now they’re down to almost a minute.”
    “That doesn’t make Eleanor or any of your crowd look very good, does it?”
    She glared out me with eyes that suddenly seemed much younger than the rest of her. Angry eyes. The veritable headlights people always have that poor, clichéd deer caught in. “That’s both rotten and ignorant of you, Teddy Branch. Jesse Owens was running in those Berlin Olympics, and his times look pretty slow now, but would anybody think the less of him?”
    “No, I’m sorry, you’re right, Mom.” I realized I’d waded into rushing waters and had better try to negotiate my way safely back to shore. But too late. She snapped at me now:
    “The artists—the painters and the writers don’t get any better, do they?”
    “What?”
    “What? There’s nobody around today who’s supposed to give Shakespeare or Rembrandt a run for their money, is there?”
    “No, that’s for sure.”
    “Are any of the current would-be geniuses any smarter than Leonardo da Vinci was?” I shook my head. I saw where this was going. “So just because athletes have better times now doesn’t mean they’re intrinsically better, does it?”
    “I see your point, Mom.”
    “Well then, you’re not as ignorant as you let on. They’re swimming today in those skin-tight suits that look like something out of science fiction. Put me in one of those new-fangled suits!” She paused to consider that for a moment. “I don’t mean me now, of course. Me then. And the pools weren’t so streamlined either, so there were waves that would wash back on us. And in the backstroke, my stroke, the rules made it much more difficult to make a legitimate turn. You had to touch with your hand, like you were playing tag. You saw Natalie last night. They can just sort of flip around.” She threw her hands all around in some representation of a backstroke flip turn. Mom had gotten herself quite worked up. “Hell,