First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

First, Catch Your Cookbook

 

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness…

 

-Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

 

Having never seen a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s famous cookery book I don’t know if her recipe for rabbit begins with “First, catch your rabbit.” If it isn’t true it ought to be, for it is fine example of both English logic (rare) and English whimsy (a defining trait). The expression is often used as a cautionary warning, similar to our American “Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.”

 

The arc from Thanksgiving to Christmas is when the thoughtful cook will seek out MeeMaw’s cookbook to verify seasonal specialties: Waldorf salad, corn casserole, turkey fried or baked or broiled, ham fried or baked or boiled, and those old traditional dishes special to each family.

 

Cookbooks are otherwise seldom consulted in our electrical times, for the cook can quickly seek out a recipe on the Orwellian telescreen / Tolkien Palantir. However, opening an old family cookbook in anticipation of the holidays is a way of inviting all the ancestors back home for a moment in time. The crumbling pages are the ones that the cook’s mother and grandmother and great-grandmother read, maybe by the light of a coal-oil lamp on a dark winter day long ago.

 

On the margins are many penciled notes and corrections. You can almost hear some ancestor muttering, “Harrumph! What does that editor in New York know about real cornbread!”

 

A slip of paper falls out – in Mama’s elegant penmanship is a recipe she copied out from her own mother’s telling. Another piece of paper might be a yellowing clipping from a newspaper, a rationing recipe with a scrap of war news on the other side.

 

Older cookbooks might be bound in leather, like a Bible, and the connections are real, for both allude to bread and life and stories. The pages of both books are pages of the histories of families. In them you can, for a moment, be a little child again, barely as high as the stove stop, helping (not very well!) your grandmother with baking your favorite cookies. Do you remember? Do you see and smell the joys of her warm kitchen again? Is Grandpa still sitting at the table rustling the pages of The Houston Post and muttering about the prices of cattle feed?

 

Some of the best memories are in that old family cookbook. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming soon, it’s time to refresh them. This is a season when memories of a drive-through just won’t do.

 

-30-

 

A Good Enough Leaf-Time - photograph and poem

 

We can make a little order where we are, and then the big sweep of history on which we can have no effect doesn't overwhelm us.  We do it with colors, with a garden, with the furnishings of a room, or with sounds and words.  We can make a little form, and we gain composure.

                                                               -Robert Frost

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Good Enough Leaf-Time

 

No more the withered summer-browns of death

Crumbling and sere upon the dry and crackling ground

Beneath a Rime of the Ancient Mariner sky -

Leaves in autumn colours are falling now

 

Pale greens, poor yellows, weak reds, but good enough

To decorate this time of early frosts

With appropriate merriment, good enough

To rake into playtime heaps for children and dogs

 

These modest scenes will attract no peepers this year

But I will send you a snap – it’s good enough!

An Old Man in the Hardware Store Considers Autumn - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Old Man in the Hardware Store Considers Autumn

 

“And He has poured down for you the rain”

 

-Joel 2:23

 

“When I’m through here,” he laughed, “I’m going home

I’m going to sit and listen to the rain

My hayfield’s all burnt up, my yard is dead

So I’m gonna to let the rain sing me to sleep”

 

We said our good-byes to the driest summer ever

And a thank you, Jesus for sweet rain at last

Next to the paper sacks of deer-bait corn

And a display of made-in-China tools

 

The wind blew open the heavy double doors

And the rain blew with it, and we were glad

Forty Guns to Apache Pass - movie review

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Forty Guns to Apache Pass

 

If you’ve never seen Forty Guns to Apache Pass, you’ve still seen Forty Guns to Apache Pass.

 

Audie Murphy’s 1967 low-budget cavalry vs Indians film employs every trope of matinee shoot-‘em-ups: a brave, brash young army officer who breaks the rules, a patient and fatherly commanding general, a platoon of ill-trained, ill-equipped, and ill-tempered troopers, the usual casting-office injuns (none of them genuine Apaches), the blonde love-interest and her cranky old Pa, the love-interest’s errant little brothers, civilians who need rescuing, horses, wagons, villains, desperate sorties against a powerful enemy, a sub-plot of redemption, and lots of shootin’.

 

The film is centered on an element of the mediaeval quest; in this story the object that will save the kingdom / Arizona is not the Grail or a magic sword, but forty modern repeating rifles. The faraway government will send only those forty and only as far as Apache Pass. Our hero and his comrades must make their way through lots and lots of Apaches to reach them.

 

After a long journey, many battles against a fierce enemy, and complications in loyalties and plot twists, the hero and his surviving companions come through, true love is rewarded, and Arizona is made safe for truth, justice, and the American way (Superman).

 

We’ve seen the same plot, setting, and characterizations over and over in hundreds of assembly-line boots-and-saddles yarns made from the 1920s until the 1960s on budgets of hundreds of dollars, and yet the same old stories are still fun. Children enjoyed them as Saturday afternoon matinees at The Palace or The Bijou for generations, and now we can popcorn-out on the couch at home, still on Saturday afternoons, for thrilling tales of yesteryear (The Lone Ranger).

 

Sometimes we want cinema (pronounce “cinema” as a snooty anapest): a soupcon of French existentialism, a serious study of post-war Italian cinema, or a new adaptation of Shakespeare, and then sometimes we want movin’ pictures with cowboys and Indians and saloon fights. And though the plots are familiar, that’s okay; Shakespeare’s plots were old when he borrowed them for his plays.

 

Audie Murphy was a fine actor – as The American in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, filmed in newly independent Viet-Nam in 1958, he is brilliant. But the westerns put more fans in the seats and paid the bills, and Mr. Murphy was a great cowboy.

 

One of the best things about Forty Guns to Apache Pass is the title. The viewer needs no exposition, no advance reviews. He or she (not “they”; one person cannot be “they”) knows what’s going to be on the screen and knows it’s going to be great fun.

 

God bless the American cowboy film, and God bless Audie Murphy, a hero in the movies and a greater hero in life.

 

-30-

Armistice Day / Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day

Several years ago my old school honored me by asking me to address the students at the annual Veterans' Day program. I thought it a pretty good speech and so reprint it:

Judge Folk

Veterans

Students of Kirbyville High School

Honored Guests

Mrs. Gore

Mrs. McClatchy

Faculty and staff

 

Thank you allowing me to speak today.

 

There are many men and women from Kirbyville and Jasper County whose service and devotion to duty makes them far more fitted for the honor. But today I guess you’re stuck with me.

 

Master Chief Petty Officer Leo Stanley, who died last month, is one of those whose voice would be better today. I wish he could be here again to share this special day with you. He was a Navy Hospital Corpsman for forty years, earning promotion to the highest enlisted rank there is. In his retirement one of the ways in which he continued serving his country was by serving you, his beloved students, in your elementary school’s reading program. Many of you remember him with great joy, for he and Miss Mary loved helping you learn to read each Friday for many years.

 

If he were here – and perhaps he is - the Chief would talk about you and your service to God and country, and he would expect me to do so too. And I will

 

I will begin with thirteen fine young folks of your generation who were killed last summer while serving humanity in helping refugees escape from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

 

You have all seen the photograph of Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee cradling an infant amid the chaos at the airport in Kabul when everything fell apart.  The picture is not a government propaganda photograph; if it were it would be of better quality. This is just a snapshot one of her fellow Marines forwarded to her.  She sent it by email to her parents with the words, “I love my job!”

 

“I love my job.”

 

Those may have been the last words this United States Marine - with her hair tied back in a ponytail - said to her mom and dad.

 

On the 26^th of August Sergeant Gee and the others who were killed with her almost surely did not think of themselves as great Americans;  they were too busy BEING great Americans.

 

They would have thought of themselves – 11 Marines, one soldier, and one Navy Hospital Corpsmen, just like your mentor Chief Stanley - as only doing their jobs in the heat and dust and violence of Afghanistan, helping civilians escape being murdered by the Taliban.

 

That’s what YOU would do. Don’t let anyone dismiss your generation with cheap and shabby stereotypes. YOU would carry a baby amid the screams and terror and dust and heat to a waiting airplane and then return to the perimeter for another child or young mother or old man or anyone who needed your help.

 

That’s what these thirteen young people did, and they were young, like you.

 

You could have even been on the same school bus run:

 

The oldest by far was Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City, Utah.  31 might seem old, but he was young.

 

Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, another woman Marine, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts

 

Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento, California

 

Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, California

 

Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha, Nebraska

 

Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Indiana

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Missouri

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyoming

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, California

 

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco, California

 

Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio

 

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tennessee.

 

They are your generation. They were killed in a scene of horror by a mad bomber who chose hate instead of love. His hate killed those 13 young Americans and wounded some 30 others who were saving lives, and killed and wounded possibly 200 or more Afghans.

 

One unhappy young man chose hate. He doesn’t represent anything.

 

But your generation has chosen love, the love Jesus spoke of when he said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

 

And these young Americans gave up their lives for people they didn’t even know.

 

No greater love indeed.

 

We have spoken of these 13, but let us remember this: every young American in Kabul that day was saving lives – they were helping terrified people get to the airplanes, helping them to safety.

 

That is also the story of just about every American soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or Coast Guard.

 

If you look at us sometimes absurd old people, I hope you remember that we were once young like you – maybe when dinosaurs roamed the earth – and that every veteran you see before you gave up some of his or her own poor rations to help feed children, gave up some of his time and sleep and effort in helping those who were hungry or displaced.

 

And finally, that’s your story too. You are going to serve humanity

in some way,

in some place,

in some time – as a soldier, a police officer, a volunteer firefighter, a paramedic, or as a good American civilian who stands tall when needed and helps the community in some way. You may not be called to carry a child to safety from Kabul Airport or from a wrecked car or from a burning building, but you will surely be called to help feed children or teach children in Sunday School or, like Chief Stanley, help out with the reading program.

 

There’s an old Army National Guard recruiting slogan that says:

 

It wasn’t always easy

It wasn’t always fair

But when freedom called we answered

We were there

 

We and your parents know that you will be there too.

 

Thank you.

Curbside Voting - or Maybe Not

  Voting in Texas is often an adventure, especially in the game of precinct tag - the citizen who has to negotiate the highest number of locations in order to vote wins. Texas voters are assigned a voting precinct, which is not the same as a county precinct, based on where he or she lives. In different elections (school board, county elections, state elections, federal elections, early voting, and so on, just where one is permitted to vote often changes. 

Another adventure is curbside voting (although once upon a time my precinct was a trailer off in some weeds and there was no curb). The illogic of this sign is wonderful - if someone who is handicapped cannot make it inside to the polling place then he or she almost surely cannot manage to reach the door where the doorbell is located.

But one of the many good things about Texas is that there is always someone around to help with wheelchairs and doors.

Voting - Thank You, Poll Workers!

 This morning I added a blazer to my ensemble because this is election day. The res publica - Latin for "the public matter" - is so important that I always dress up just a little to honor freedom.

The many nice folks who volunteer to serve America at the polls deserve our gratitude. Thank you, everyone!