Midwest Memo
Menu memory
by Alan Shultz

Apples, crisp green apples cut in little wedges and set out on a blue china plate. Popcorn, white and hot from the stove, fluffy and overflowing the large yellow Pyrex bowl. And eggs, hard boiled eggs, peeled and slippery and rolling about on a white platter.

Apples and popcorn and eggs, oh my.

When our children were youngsters a happenstance menu of these unrelated snacks came together and became our traditional family movie watching fare. It was a ritual of comfort food and lots of blankets and pillows and the five of us sitting in front of the little flickering television, the VCR rolling a favorite tape.

Back then our kids only wanted to watch movies we knew, no surprises, no disappointments. Our list of choices was pretty short. We knew the Indiana Jones series so well we could each recite the dialog as each character's lips formed the words.

"Hang on lady, we going for a ride," Willie would say each time as Indiana Jones cut the suspension bridge and we five collectively clutched as the good guys swung precariously above the raging river. Even as we clutched, we knew it would all work out in the end. Back in those days of cinematic certainty, a happy ending was guaranteed in our household.

When it was cold outside, or the mood in the household was somehow melancholy, our pick would be "Anne of Green Gables," the television adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's marvelous tale set on Prince Edward Island in Canada.

It's the story of a red haired orphan girl sent by mistake to a dour elderly brother and sister pair. Anne brings qualities and experiences to the couple who fill and round and color out lives which until the young girl's arrival were sketched in hard gray, joyless lines.

In one scene the old bachelor Matthew Cuthbert goes off to the general store to purchase Anne a much longed for dress with puff sleeves. We collectively ached each time as Matthew, so out of his element, struggled to ask about a dress. As his cover, Matthew purchased things he had no need for at the time, a rake, brown sugar, lots of it, until he finally blurts out his mission.

When Matthew presents the dress to Anne, he points out the feature so sought by the young girl.

"Puff sleeves," he says.

"The puffiest," she replies.

And sure enough, the Kleenex would then make its way around our room. Looking back it seems like we might as well have been in church, the sermon on change and redemption was that clear. Better yet, the message came with apples, eggs and popcorn.

I remember that my mother

once observed that the happiest

of times rarely come in a planned fashion and never come labeled. Often it is only retrospect that turns the ordinary and routine into the lovely and cherished.

It was an apple, a green apple cut in wedges sitting on a tray on a folding table with other food at an office meeting that triggered my memory. I went back to a time that was unplanned, that should have been labeled...."treasure this."

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Gem of the day

I belong to an organization that faces an enormous project that will let loose lots of opinions, costs and commentary. The project will likely be a success if the big picture stays in focus.

In seeking consensus, the president of the organization quoted William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago. At his inaugural address at the founding of the university back in 1892 Harper offered this observation:

"The question before us is how to become one in spirit, not necessarily opinion."

Harper's observation remains sound advice still today for families, congregations and communities.