Hello, good people.
Well, it was too good a streak to remain unbroken. After 15 days of unbroken longwindedness (heh heh, you said broke wind, heh heh), I have been advised that I should not miss LutherCorp’s Christmas party tonight. “But...but...what about Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina?” said I. “How about if I start posting comments to Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina, so that people can reeeeeeeally get to know you?” said my office buddy who will probably be making her presence known here any day now. Do not pay attention to a word she says, for it is her life’s mission to reduce me to blushiness. It’s all lies, damnable lies.
So tonight I am indulging in the time-honored Pasting in of the Words of Others, hoping that this constitutes fair use and not an egregious violation of copyright. Since I had so much fun writing last night’s valentine to hot cereal, here are two stories from one of the books I mentioned, Oats! A Book of Whimsy, by Shirley and Maria Streshinsky. If you think that this is the last word on oatmeal from me, keep dreaming, pally. In the meantime, I am off to engage in a little cheer with my fellow monkeys. Pictures will be taken. If any of them depict me as the pre-Raphaelite goddess of my hopes, rather than the gin-blossomed nightmare of my fears, then pictures may even be shared.
As a wee lad of eight, growing up in the small Irish town of Belleck, in the county Fermanagh, Ireland, I shared a fairly modest home with my family, including the aunt who raised me, a sister, a variety of dogs, a pony, and a beloved donkey named Rufus. I woke up one morning with a notion that I was not going to school that day and decided to convince my aunt that I was truly sick—not well enough for school, mind you, but not sick enough to see the local pharmacist (the closet doctor was in the next county). Since my aunt was a firm believer that our daily oats (which I loved eating with Mother Kelly’s Double Cream when we could afford it) were a cure-all, she decided to stir up a batch in the great black kettle that hung over the peat fire. She and I sat with our feet in front of the fireplace, warming our hands on the large steaming porcelain bowls of oatmeal. But after a few bites, Auntie thought something was missing. She opened the pantry door, and from behind the lovely Bellock china she retrieved a bottle of her favorite Irish whiskey, pouring a dram on her oatmeal and, winking at me, a bit less in mine. “Irish whiskey and oatmeal, that’s the stuff,” she proclaimed boldly as the aroma entered my nasal passages and I was filled with a warm glow. Mixed with brown sugar, warmed heavy cream, and that Irish amber fluid, my oatmeal had never tasted so good, and now I knew why Auntie believed so strongly in the curative power of oats.
-- Seamus McManus is general manager of the Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Honolulu
In August of 1947, I was at the Salt Lake City airport for an early morning flight. I headed to the coffee shop for breakfast and slid onto a stool at the counter. A couple of stools away, reading the menu slowly and carefully, was a young cowboy. He said to the waitress: “I’d like to get some oatmeal, Ma’am.”
The waitress said “sure,” wrote it down and started to walk away.
“Ma’am,” he called after her, “could I have that with brown sugar?”
“Sure,” she made another note and started for the kitchen.
“And ma’am, could you put some raisins in it? Like maybe a handful, and a little pat of butter, with a sprinkle of cinnamon over it?”
She turned back to him. “And cream?”
He beamed. “That’s right, but not that thin old Blue John milk, if you could get me a little pitcher full of real heavy cream I sure would appreciate it.”
She studied him carefully, paused a moment, then she said: “You live with your mother, don’t you?”
His face lit up. “How ‘ju know?”
-- Jon Brenneis is a photographer/raconteur. On the Salt Lake City trip where he met the Oatmeal Cowboy he was on assignment for Life Magazine. A few years later, finding himself in the early morning in yet another airport in another part of the country, he requested of the waitress: “Oatmeal, please, with a few raisins mixed in and some brown sugar sprinkled on top, if you will...” To which the waitress responded: “And I suppose you want a nickel in the bottom of the bowl?”
Hey, wait a minute. I’m being robbed here. My mother lives in my basement and I don’t get good oatmeal. I’m missing out on some benefits, here.