Tomatoes are good

Tomatoes are good for your heart....pass it on.

In early September of 1969, the youth group at my church, Calvary Baptist, decided to have a food drive to help the needy folks in our community have a swell thanksgiving holiday. I thought that's a wonderful thing to do because I could not imagine what it was like to go without turkey and all the fixings. My mother always, always had the best holiday spreads. She was a fantastic self taught cook and I was always amazed at her culinary skills, how she could magically take a few basic raw ingredients and transform them into something special, yummy.
Mom was born the only girl, seventh of eight, and I guess as soon as she could reach the stove the primary cooking responsibility was hers by default. Her father was a drunk that only came home when it was time to eat or beat the wife and kids, fortunately or is it stereotypically he had a poor appetite and an unsteady gait. My grandmother… well…. lets just say she was unstable after coming back, or should it be, escaped from Chilocco Indian School pregnant, to get married….young….an understatement, and I'll leave it at that for now. Grandma's a story that would take a book to tell as others have, very interesting stuff…They Called It Prairie Light, is the best book I have read on that dark chapter of American history. I would like to write about Chilocco, but I am unable to maintain my objectivity and anyone who has read my blog knows the subjective is not a problem for me….in other words it pisses me off too much to think about, and the more I resurch the subject the bigger my red-ass becomes a visceral antipathy.)
Food….thanks to the sponsorship of a generous 'Indian agency' the federal government (talk about an oxymoron: Indian agent…here's another: legal murder) dry beans, cornmeal and various canned food items affectionately referred 'Indian commodities' (another oxy.), were to provide the 'disadvantaged indigenous indigents' (re- redundancy) with minimal subsistence, or was it to provide the displaced a pacifier, forcing dependence on the most basic of human needs, since the natives never, as in never considered the concept, owned land….that is quality realty…fertile soil and sweet-water to raise self supported food stores for themselves once under the opened agents umbrella. The menu hardly ever changed, beans and cornbread…supplemented with the hunting and fishing skills of my uncles. A few chickens were raised, one chicken didn't go vary far and deciding to have eggs or a scraggy chicken is like, for me, choosing to eat toast or the toaster.
To hear mom tell it, with nine people eyeballing the tomatoes on the vine those 'maters didn't have a chance to turn red ripe, most of the time they never made it to the kitchen, much less out of the garden. Reminds me of my dads family…my pop had two brothers and grandpa always said the first one up was the best dressed that day. At moms house: first up….best fed, said they even had a salt shaker for garden use only. I can only imagine what it was like mornings getting dressed at moms house, the toughest meanest brother of the seven left best dressed, and the youngest, damaged because of chain-of-custody disputes combined with normal wear and tare of hand-me-downs, left bloody, naked and crying. That is my concept of poor, the poor I can identify with.
Back to the food drive…..by early November the can drive was in full swing with a challenge issued to each bible class: the class that brings in the most donations wins a trip to Tulsa for an evening of ice-skating and a pizza party at shotgun-sams afterward. Every Sunday up until the week before thanksgiving I brought a grocery sack full of groceries to Sunday school. I would go out knocking on neighbors doors, hitting up the grandparents, my uncles. Now I know why they were so generous. The last Sunday before thanksgiving my bag was extra heavy, triggering my mom to check my inventory against hers…..seems her kitchen inventory had been shrinking for the last few weeks, busted, I don't like tomatoes, among other things, maybe some one else does. But mom, 'I just have to win, it's ice-skating and pizza', I whined. And bam…..her mood turned on a dime and gave me that "look", you know the ones moms give just before she tells you to go out and get a switch. Mom proceeded to sit me down and gave me a brief bio (of which she never ever spoke of) what life was like for her when she was growing up, about how the church supported her family during the hardest of times. She explained the "real" reason I was collecting food. She opened her bible to Mathew, 25:40, she read the passage to me then made me read it back to her. She explained in simple words that an eleven year old would understand, I was helping to feed kids that didn't have much….for Jesus, that I was His helper, that I was special because He chose me to help Him here on earth and that my friends should be able to see what I am doing for is for Jesus, not pizza!! I cried, we prayed and she didn't make me put any of the groceries back and we left for church, late. When we got to church I was grabbing my bag, she looked at me from the backseat and asked me to repeat back what I just learned. Err….ummm……umm, I better get this right or I ain't going skating, "If I don't help Jesus take care of the poor people, nobody else will?" Must have been a good answer because I got that loving 'that's my boy' hug; the ones that only mothers can give.
That mini-bible study has impacted my life more than any Sunday school class more than any preaching service, did more to shape the way I treat others than any one thing in my life. The seed was planted and still grows; but only when I take care of it, water it, share the fruits from it like those that first visited moms house years ago.
The youth department at Calvary had maybe forty to fifty young people on any given Sunday. My Sunday school class won, we got to go on our trip…..so did everyone else too. I didn't care, oh…I wanted to go alright, but it just didn't seem that important anymore. We raised enough to hand out about thirty baskets, spending the Sunday night before thanksgiving Thursday packing them for the adults to deliver Monday.
A funny thing happened that Monday night, something that also had a profound impact on my life. You see we got a knock on our door that night and it was a couple of deacons for our church and guess what……………they delivered a basket of groceries to our house, the very ones I helped pack the night before. Now I was just blown away….I mean what where they doing at my house? This confused me, I thought, we aren't poor, we got food, I got toys, I got stuff, some of my friends don't, what's the deal here? It had never occurred to me we were poor until the church told us. I had a hard time with this, because I wondered who else thought we were poor, you know, at school as if I should be ashamed, you would have thought someone would have let me in on the secret. But it didn't change a thing, the Lords blessing is the ONLY thing that makes me rich and it had come full circle. Want to know how I know? I got that same can of tomatoes, for real, the same stinking can back. Jesus knows I hate tomatoes and always have. In my eyes that can was a real miracle, I think today that is the only thing standing between me and heaven is a can of tomatoes, I am sure the seeds, those very seeds, of those particular tomatoes in that can, came out of moms childhood garden, physically and spiritually. I've tried them dur'maters since, they ain't that bad, after all they are red like The Blood.………...Amen
………………………..Kosmicdebris………………………………......