|
The Preacher’s Corner
By Rev. Dr. Milton Winter I give thanks for our wonderful variety of veggies Thanksgiving
is a time for all those wonderful, traditional vegetables and fruits.
Sweet potatoes, green beans, turnips, asparagus casserole. I have had a
particular craving for pumpkin pie. I usually have only one piece per
season, but this year I might have two. We have
an amazing assortment of vegetables and other groceries at hand. People
in the long ago could never have envisioned such variety. I knew a
minister from Scotland who loved nothing better, when visiting our
country, than to stroll the aisles in a large supermarket and marvel. I
have a fading childhood memory of the vegetable man who came down
Linden Avenue, in front of my paternal grandparents’ home each morning
in Memphis, Tenn. You would hear him crying off his wares in a strong
Italian accent. He was a small man, and his cart was pulled by a little
mule. Sometimes he would push the cart himself. Grandmother always sent
me out with ten or fifteen cents to buy something for her. She was
always glad for his butter beans, or some turnip greens. I suppose that man supported himself and raised a family from his little vegetable cart. In
the afternoon, the Good Humor ice-cream truck came down my
grandmother’s street. That is a story for another day, but it required
a nickel, and was something we did not have in the little town where I
grew up down in the Mississippi Delta. The
vegetable man and others like him (there must have been many), got
their supplies from an entity called the Curb Market, that stretched a
block above Madison, at the corner of Cleveland, I think, there in
midtown Memphis. All the farmers brought in their produce early in the
morning — very early, I think. Mr. Cork, who sold
vegetables from a wonderful little store that was built like a large
screened-in porch on Highway 61 in my hometown of Cleveland, which was
110 miles from Memphis, would drive to Memphis three nights a week,
returning home with a truck full of fresh produce, which he would
unload and arrange for sale by the time customers began arriving about
8 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Cork would run the market
in the warm months, and then in the winter they would batten down the
shutters on their vegetable stand and spend the winter in Florida. The
successor to such enterprises now, in cities and larger towns, are the
deluxe vegetable markets, that also feature imported items, and
“natural” foods of all types, including eggs from free-range chickens,
milk from “contented” cows, meat with no steroids, and so forth — all
at exquisitely high prices, I might add. Last
spring I visited Mt. Vernon, and spent an amazing day. There is so much
to see at George Washington’s restored plantation! There was one
disappointment, though. A restaurant near his
old mansion, purports to serve meals prepared from “authentic Mt.
Vernon recipes,” but it does nothing of the kind. Martha
may have overseen the production of each of the dishes I ate, but these
things came in and out of season at different times. She did not have
the freezer that made it possible to enjoy all the items I was served
all at once! I like having the full range of the
produce of the whole earth at my near reach. There is something to be
said for the ebb and flow of the seasons and the good things to eat
that arrive with the different times of year. Thanksgiving calls to
mind a simpler time, and I like that, too. After all, the first
Thanksgiving was not about abundance, but gratitude for mere survival.
Those Pilgrims would not have made it apart from the grace of God and
the Indians. Mrs. Obama is urging Americans to reach out to people in our country who live in “food deserts.” That
is, people in certain urban and rural areas that are without stores
that sell a decent range of fresh fruits and vegetables. Those items
cost more than “fast food,” and too many people have just fallen into
the habit of pizzas and burgers, and it is taking a terrible toll on
our health. Church folk can help. The Methodists
in Lambert, for example, are showing their neighbors how to raise
gardens. You would think everybody would have this ability, but raising
a garden takes more skill and perseverance than you initially think,
and unless your parents taught you how, and ingrained the discipline …
let’s just say that for many, it is a forgotten art. Mississippi
Public Radio said this morning that 18 percent of the people in our
state do not eat the proper foods. At this Thanksgiving time, we need
to think about ways to reverse this trend. One way to be thankful is to
help people and educate them. There is a better way, and the good earth
under our feet is God’s gift to help us help ourselves.
|
