Polly’s Ham With Mac & Cheese
My Aunt Polly flashed long, red fingernails despite her farmwife duties. A large, round woman with black hair and a chin mole, which she called her “beauty mark,” Aunt Polly’s fingernails survived her duties as cook, harvest truck driver and farmhand. When she talked, her red-tipped hands flew wildly through the air as she punctuated each sentence with her deep belly-rolling laugh. Polly married my mother’s brother Jess soon after his release from a German Prisoner of War camp following World War II, and allegedly after his younger brother Frank dumped her for a Texas beauty he met while serving in the Army. My mother related that the love triangle caused a lasting riff between the brothers because Jess always believed Polly came to him by default. Whether she came to him by default or not...