Life Always Has Its Lumps

Lots of things transpired during my 6 month blog hiatus. Turns out, life rolls on whether you blog about it or not. The high, lows and everything in between. Once upon a time I shared them all with y'all because that is how friends are. And frankly doing so helped hone my writing skills and turn me into a better writer. 



Today I'd like to share some of my writing that also happens to tie into perhaps the most significant event that happened during my blogging hiatus.



I was raised by a single mother that had to work full-time to support me and my brother. I was lucky enough to have a great set of grandparents that also were heavily involved in my life. Many of y'all have read the memoir I wrote about my grandfather's passing in conjunction with the birth and subsequent heart surgery of my oldest son.  Sadly back in December my grandmother joined my grandfather in the everafter. 

  

My Granny Howery shaped who I am as she was
second only to my mom in influence in my life. As many of you know I've
been working on a comedic memoir/cookbook/manifesto title Lettuce Is The
Devil. Until my grandmother's passing I'd never shared one scrap of that project, but Chapter 3 showcased much of how I felt and was influenced by my grandmother so I shared it on Facebook and today I want to share it with those of you who do not follow me there. Today I've added a few photos to enhance the story.



From Chapter 3 of Lettuce Is the Devil : The Cu linary Dogma of a Devout Meat Man


If I had a dollar for every time I’ve proclaimed the words, “Lettuce is
the Devil,” I’d have enough money to purchase a lush mountain valley,
complete with a herd of well-marbled Bonsmara beef cattle and a gurgling
stream, teaming with fat and hungry trout and meandering by a nice
spacious log cabin, containing two huge copper beer vats -- full to the
brim of dark malty ale. Yes, my friends I would be in Meat Man utopia. 



But alas, spreading the gospel has not brought me that kind of fame or
fortune to this point, which is why I thank you for purchasing this
tomè and helping to remedy that gross injustice. Furthermore, now seems
like a fine time for me to point out that this book would make a fine
gift to all your friends, family and fellow countrymen, whether they
happen to already be a righteous member of the meat loving brethren in
need of fellowship, or a sinful, veggie-phyte in dire need of
enlightenment.


Now let’s get back to my personal motto, “Lettuce
is the Devil.” Upon utterance of these ever-so-truthful words I am met
with a wide variety of responses. 


A fellow Meat Man is likely to
offer an immediate high-five, or perhaps a military salute, whereas a
vegetarian is apt to give a nervous chuckle. Vegans often swoon and
faint on the spot, but given their frail and anemic dispositions that is
no rare occurrence. 


The vast majority of omnivores respond with a question. “Okay, I’ll bite,” they say. “If lettuce is the devil, what is God?”


God.


The All-Mighty. 


Lord Of All Creation.



No food can live up to such lofty titles, so it is at this point I
have to explain that when I say … “Lettuce is the Devil,” I don’t mean
in the physical, forked tail and gleaming red eyes kind of way, so much
as I mean the ultimate evil -- the epitome of the joy-sapping darkness
draining all happiness and color from this world.


Therefore, the
Anti-Devil, the divine, the most heavenly edible on this earth is not to
be thought of as creator or even as the All-Knowing deity that people
the world over turn to in times of need. No, the culinary king of peace,
the messiah of mealtime is more of a savory savior. A righteous symbol
of all that is good and right in the universe. It makes the dinner place
a better place to sit. It heals, soothes, nourishes, and brings hope to
even the most horrendous of slop. 


So what is this virtuous vittle? 


Steak -- perhaps, a nicely marinated rib-eye, or maybe even a porterhouse?










Nope. 



I concede steak is a worthy and wholesome meal, as well as a palate
pleasing source of nutrition, but not even a perfectly cooked piece of
beef can heal everything it touches. Steak does not make everything it
comes in contact with taste better.


Bacon then you say? Surely it
must the God of meats. After all, it makes everything it touches taste
better. People even sprinkles bits of it on salad to improve the taste.







You are correct. Lettuce munchers do use bacon, and let me add what a
terrible waste of pig flesh. Bacon, the candy of the meat world can and
will help to cover the vile taste of the evil green one, but despite its
tasty crunch and satisfying flavor, bacon is not The One, for it lacks
the soothing tranquility necessary to bring about change. And the pure
and holy food would never allow itself to be associated with bits of
salad.


I hear the rumblings of the congregations, the impatience of
the doubting Thomases. Not steak. Not Bacon.



They are the dynamic duo.
The superheroes of the butcher shop. What meat could possibly be more
righteous than either steak or bacon?




Hold onto your cleaver my friends, but the Yahweh of Yummy is not technically even a meat.


The Anti-Devil, The Supreme Culinary Comfort, the Dietary Deity is … Brown Gravy.



Do not be fooled its viscous nature, Brown Gravy's classification as
food is steadfast and solid. Beverages are served in glasses, mugs,
bottles, cans, and a variety of stemware. Dipping sauces come in dainty
little bowls and ramekins. But like the very forefathers that forged
this nation, Brown Gravy arrives in a boat.


Brown Gravy is forged
from the juice of meat. Its base, the savory fluid, is the very essence
of meat. But in a display of tolerance, love, and harmony Brown Gravy
combines this delectable nectar with flour, the powdery essence of the
wheat plant and transforms into the most holy of foods. Thick and meaty
of flavor, and capable of supper time salvation, Brown Gravy can turn a
plain ground beef patty into a hamburger steak. Let me say that again.
Ground beef into a steak. Remind you of someone famous that once turned
water into wine? 


Let me hear an AMEN!


And along those same
lines it is said Jesus fed the masses with but a few loaves and a couple
of fish. My mother used to do the same thing, only on a smaller scale,
by feeding her two hungry teenage boys with half a pound of round steak
and a boatload of Brown Gravy. No one knows how to stretch the budget
better than a single mom.


But Brown Gravy’s miraculous ability to
save does not end there. Picture this … you have a grill full of
burgers going when that hot neighbor next door decides to mow her lawn.
In a string bikini. Distracted you fail to notice the flare-ups. In a
matter of minutes your tasty burgers shrivel and die. You could feed the
dry, hockey puck like patties to the dog, but the game is about to
start so you don’t have to time to cook yourself more. What is a Meat
Man to do? Easy, whip up a quick batch of brown gravy, pour the ambrosia
over the burgers and all is well for everyone but Fido.


Or your
time of crisis could come as a result of your wife’s hysterectomy, when
taking pity on you, your mother-in-law brings over her “World Famous”
meatloaf to help feed the family. Until that moment in time you never
realized “World Famous” was a synonym for bland, tasteless, and dry, but
as your starving kids gaze upon you with those sad,
do-we-really-have-to-eat-this eyes you remember that packet of brown
gravy just sitting up there in the cupboard waiting to embrace a bad
meal and turn it into something good.


I’ll grant you that fresh,
totally homemade Brown Gravy, the kind grandma used to make is the best,
but part of the beauty of Brown Gravy is that even emergency rations,
such as the powder-filled, ready-made packets, offer hope and peace in
times of need.


Legend has it that as a small child I’d eat anything.
Whirled peas, spinach, purred carrots. My family tells me this was the
case until just after my fourth birthday when I got deathly sick, and
ran a high temperature for days,. They say I laid there sweating and
shivering in that hospital bed. They say I nearly died. They say, the
day my fever broke was the last day I was willing to eat vegetables.







Now I suppose there are several ways to explain this change. Perhaps I
saw a light and realized life is too damned short to spend eating crap
that tastes like weeds and lawn clippings. Perhaps I figured out eating
all that “nutritious” stuff damn near killed me. Perhaps a carnivorous
angel watched over me and whispered meaty lullabies in my ear while my
body fought to survive. Truthfully, I don’t really care what brought
about the change, I’m just mighty glad the truth found me, and at such
an early age that my body, mind, and taste buds were not tainted beyond
repair. 


Not that my family didn't try to perpetuate the damage. As
the saying goes, misery loves company so my kinfolk, especially my mom,
tried to turn me back to vegetables. For years, I battled my mom and
others at mealtime.


You can’t go outside and play until you eat EVERYTHING on your plate.
How are you ever going to grow up big and tall if you don’t eat your veggies?

I don’t care if we have to sit here all night neither one of us is
getting up from the table until you’ve eaten those three green beans. 

 
Yep, we had some battles.


My mom won her share, but this book is evidence that in the end, she lost the war.


Lucky for me, I could count on one steady and constant ally. – my Grandmother, or Granny Howery as I called her. 



Granny Howery not only told everyone else to leave me alone, but
fearing my stubborn streak would lead to starvation, she went out of her
way to make the few things I was willing to eat. Like Brown Gravy. And
no one, made Brown Gravy like my Granny Howery.


It didn’t matter
what else she cooked my grandmother ALWAYS made a batch of Brown Gravy,
special for me. Many a time the family ate casserole, or goulash, or
stew while I dipped fresh, hot buttery dinner rolls in Brown Gravy.


“Oh, leave him alone,” my grandmother would say to my mom, aunts, and uncles. “At least he’s eating something.”



Granny Howery steadfastly defended me to others, but in private she’d
sometimes whisper, “You really should eat some vegetables. You don’t
wanna get rickets.”


To this day I’m not sure what rickets actually
is, but I do know I never got them, and at six-foot five, and nearly
three-hundred pounds I’m kind of glad I didn’t eat all that stuff, for I
do believe I’m as big and strong as anybody needs to be.


Not all
Brown Gravy is as good or smooth as Granny Howery’s Brown Gravy,
sometimes there are even a few lumps in it, but you know what? Life
ain’t always fair, or easy. A Meat Man, however, knows how to deal with
the trouble. A Meat Man embraces all situations. A Meat man follows
Covenant #3 ...

DON’T LET THE LUMPS SLOW YOU DOWN


Like I said, me and my mom waged many a battle over my Meat Man or in
those days, Meat Boy, diet. My dad was even worse, but given the fact
he only showed up every six months or so those conflicts were sporadic
at best. 


By the time I was seven or eight my mom had begun to
realize the cause was lost. She'd mostly given up the fight, except when
others were around. I suppose she feared criticism of her parenting
skills for allowing me to eat only meat and bread. Maybe she worried
they would call CPS and turn her in for not providing proper nutrition.
Heck, maybe they all whispered in her ear, “That boy is gonna get
rickets if you don’t start making him eat his vegetables.” All I know is
the last real skirmish of our war occurred at a family function up in
Denver, Colorado. Had we been boxers, it would've been dubbed – The Mile
High Melee.








I believe it was a funeral, but I suppose it could’ve
been a wedding. Whatever the reason we'd made the six hour trek north
and were staying with some cousins. There was lots of extended family
around. So many that we kids were not allowed in the kitchen to make our
own plates. Given that we were nearly four hundred miles from Granny
Howery’s kitchen the chances were slim to none that Brown Gravy would be
served, so I was already dreading the meal, even before my mom handed
over my plate.


A slice of ham, a dinner roll, some kind of nasty
pink marshmallowy casserole stuff, and three green beans. Staring down
in horror, I didn’t realize those three green beans were about to be the
stuff of legend. Sorry Jack, but no tale of beans, yes even those of
Fee-Fi-Fo fame, has spawned as much grief for their owner as that trio
of legumes did me.


I ate the ham.
I ate the biscuit.
I fed
the pink marshmallow goo to my cousins' Afghan hound, but the big hairy
bastard wouldn’t eat so much as one of the green beans.




Man’s best
friend my ass. A few years later that same Afghan sunk its teeth into
my hand and I have no doubt the bite was retaliation for my repeated
attempts to poke those beans down its throat. Never before, or after,
did the pooch show even the slightest sign of aggression.


After a
while my mom wandered over to the kids table. “You’re not going to go
play with the other kids until you eat those green beans.”


I stared at her.
She stared back.


“Hurry up, Travis,” said my cousin Keith. “So we can go outside and play hide and seek.”


I shot him a look.


“Fine, I’ll eat them for you,” he said.



“Oh no you won’t,” chimed in my mom from across the room. “Earlier she
hadn’t been paying a damned bit of attention, but now she was in heat
seeking missile mode. Maybe she’d seen the Afghan licking his pink lips
and realized I’d do anything to avoid eating the undesirable elements on
my plate.


I sat there.
I begged.
I pleaded.
I cried.
I pouted.
And eventually got my way --sort of.




I was forced to go to bed extra early, while my cousins ran and played. But, I didn’t eat those three green beans.



The funeral, wedding or whatever it was had been the day before so the
next morning the family loaded up a Winnebago and headed into the snowy
mountains. This was the late seventies, so the RV was one of those huge,
tin-boxes on wheels. Our clan was headed up near Winter Park to go
tubing. We kids sat in the back, staring out the Winnebago’s rear window
while making rude gestures at the unlucky motorists behind us. All the
way up the mountain pass, my cousins teased me about having to go to bed
early ... all because I wouldn’t eat three stupid green beans.


Bean boy.
Sprout.
Jolly Green Crybaby.



I took the taunts of my older cousins with all the grace, dignity, and
unassuming gusto as any eight-year-old boy would. By whining, crying and
complaining to any adult that would listen. But I didn't find so much
as a single sympathetic ear as they all too thought I should've eaten
those three green beans. Granny Howery had stayed back in Denver with
the other senior set.


Things settled down when we reached out destination and we’d been tubing the better part of the day when it happened.



For those who have never gone tubing let me explain this rather simple
activity. You take a inflatable inner tube, flop yourself down on it and
slide down the mountain.






The laidback tuber prefers the butt in the
hole position, as if they were simply floating along a gentle river,
whereas the more daring folk assumed a belly down deployment so as to
hurdle down the mountainside head first. Either way, getting from point
A, at the top of the hill, to point B, several hundred yards down the
hill, was relatively easy. Gravity did all the work.


However,
getting from point B, back to Point A, was not nearly as convenient. In
those days the process involved laying supine on the tube and holding
onto a handle which was attached to a cable which pulled you back up.
Sounds rather innocent, but after a long day of fun my eight-year-old
arms began to tire.


There I was, getting hauled back to the top for the umpteenth time when I simply gave out and let go.


Gravity took over.


I plunged downward.



Sliding feet-first, I went no more than seven or eight feet before I
collided with my mom. In a domino case of cause and effect, my snow
boots impacted the side of her head, bringing about the release of her
tenuous grip. With two tubers hurling down it wasn't long until a slew
of folks were gathered up in an avalanche of flesh and rubber heading
the wrong direction. Most happened to be related to me, but there were a
few unsuspecting and innocent strangers among the disgruntled and
battered bodies at the bottom of the hill.


Some were groaning, a
few were cussing and most were trying to assess their various bumps,
scrapes and bruises when Keith piped up and said, “Dang, it Travis. You
should’ve eaten those three green beans.”


Three decades have
passed since then. One for each of those green beans and yet, to this
day I am known as the-kid-who-wouldn’t-eat-his-veggies.
The family still talks about their minor injuries that day as if they
lost limbs and shed copious amounts of blood, but they have never found a
empathetic listener in me. For I know, had they fed me Brown Gravy
rather than a trio of legumes, they could have easily avoided their
lumps.