Excerpted from the book “Brothers and Sisters” (Edited by Fred Blahnik)
The following condensed essay was written by Betty Pestka.
Don and I took over milking duties when Fran went into the Army in the spring of 1968. The two of us were understandably as nervous as hogs in a transport truck inheriting this important job which Fran had conscientiously discharged for so many years. Knowing there were two of us sharing the workload and responsibilities was at least somewhat comforting and helped defray my anxiety. Don and I worked well together and had many nice long conversations before, during, and after our milking chores. Notwithstanding the fact the disingenuous poltroon tricked me into sharing intimate information with him on one infamous occasion and then failed to reciprocate as he had previously promised, I nonetheless cherish those long-gone times hanging out together in our archaic barn swapping stories and impressions with my beloved older brother!
I strongly remember when Don moved to Winona, Minnesota to attend Winona State University in the autumn of 1971, after first completing a two year stint at Rochester Junior College. I had already been in Winona for a year attending the now-defunct College of St. Teresa, situated about a mile away from the W.S.U. campus; hence I was experienced at being away from home and had grown accustomed to the freewheeling college lifestyle and living in a distant city. Don resided in Richards Hall that benchmark year, and could be found every evening for the first several months of the school session with his rear end parked steadfastly in the TV room of his designated dormitory. I would walk over to see Don pretty frequently just to check in on him and always knew exactly where to find my older sibling—perched mesmerized like some sort of automaton right in front of that communal television set.
My raven-haired brother surely wasn’t the best cook in college either!
This statement calls to mind walking into Richards Hall one day and smelling this horribly putrid odor extending all the way down into the lobby of the humongous dormitory. I followed my nose and–not surprisingly–it led me straight to my older brother Don’s messy room. It seems Don had attempted to boil some eggs that day and then transiently left the area to do something else, totally forgetting about the eggs he had sat on the stove. The water from the pan quickly evaporated, but the eggs obviously continued to cook despite the absence of water.
The end result?
The witless Don definitely did not make any new friends on that occasion; the malignant smell from those overcooked eggs lingered throughout the entire dormitory for several days thereafter!
Another time, gourmet master chef Don Blahnik resolved to channel his erstwhile undeveloped culinary abilities…….and master the art of making macaroni and cheese!
What, the reader is probably asking, could possibly go awry in preparing this gallingly simple entrée?
Well…..…nescient Don didn’t know the pan of water should be boiling BEFORE you dumped the noodles in!!! Therefore, he brought the innocuous noodles to an excruciatingly slow boil as they gradually lost shape and decomposed into amorphous yellow globs. Predictably, the well-intentioned but overmatched gourmand wound up with a strange-looking, discolored mush that was anything but tasty–in fact it was scarcely edible…….yet I think chronically starving Don eagerly wolfed down the god-awful concoction anyway like it was some sort of French delicacy!!
Don also expeditiously learned his younger sister could magically grow a written report for one of his classes that wasn’t quite the required number of pages into a longer, more professional official version, so my assistance with a few of those assignments came in very handy to the rakish but lovable slackard.
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