Have you ever read The
Egg and I by Betty MacDonald? If you haven’t, please do.
The Egg and I is
the hilarious memoir of a young bride living in Chimacum (yes, that Chimacum,
just across the Hood Canal Bridge) in the late 1920s. Betty was a Seattle girl
transplanted to an isolated farm on the Olympic Peninsula. Her closest
neighbors were the original Ma and Pa Kettle, and I don’t mean that in
comparison. Their names (in the book, anyway) were actually Ma and Pa Kettle. In
the 1947 movie The Egg and I starring
Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray, the Kettles were such a big hit that the
characters were launched into eight sequel films starring Marjorie Main and
Percy Kilbride. I highly recommend watching at least one—big fun for the whole family.
The fact that The Egg
and I was made into a movie should give you a hint at its popularity. The
book was so successful (as Wikipedia assures me) that in the two years
following its 1945 publication, it was reprinted on nearly a monthly basis. I
believe it; my 1947 copy is from the twenty-third printing. So cool.
An international sensation, Betty’s books for some reason proved
especially popular in Germany. I like to picture them—German-speaking, sausage-eating,
Lederhosen-wearing, post–World War II men and women—enjoying funny stories from a
young farm wife in Chimacum. I suppose they admired someone who had experienced
tough times, but retold them with optimism and humor.
I’ve read The Egg and
I more times than I can remember, and except for that first magical read,
my favorite was one winter’s day a few years ago when I shared the book with my
whole family. We had spent a couple of days with grandparents,
and as the ferry is too expensive to ride westbound home when
you’re paying for a car and driver and six passengers, we chose to drive the
two and one-quarter hours around by way of Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
Which is a story for another day.
Anyway, with all five kids and my husband captive in the
van, I pulled out The Egg and I and
nonchalantly said something like, “This is an interesting book. There’s one
part I like that’s pretty good, if I can find it.” And I started reading, at
page one.
Two and one-quarter hours later, my voice was gone, and
everyone was laughing and wanting more. I had six Betty MacDonald converts on
my hands.
Betty was the queen of finding humor in the everyday, and
hitting the right subtle notes to turn a potentially funny story into something
side-splitting. When she describes her ornery cook stove as being against her, you
get it. We all have appliances (or computers, or cars) that seem out to get us.
Because you’ve been nice and read to the end, here’s a treat
from The Egg and I:
“By one o’clock on winter Sundays the house was shining
clean, my hair was washed, Bob had on clean clothes and dinner was ready.
Usually, just as we sat down to the table, as if by prearranged signal, the sun
came out. True it shone with about as much warmth and lust as a Victorian
spinster and kept darting behind clouds as if it were looking for its knitting
and sticking its head out again with an apologetic smile, but it was sun and
not rain. The mountains, either in recognition of the sun or Sunday, would have
their great white busts exposed and I expected momentarily to have them clear
their throats and start singing Rock of
Ages in throaty contraltos.”
Check out The Egg and
I and Betty’s other wonderful books—including the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for children—at your local library. If
they don’t have these titles, request them!
