The Coonridge Digest: Greatness in the fire of adversity

Greetings from the Ridge.

I’m still trying to figure out the theory behind green tea. Seems like from the Boston Tea Party onward we’ve gotten by famously with brown tea but something has happened in the last decade to turn everything green. I suspect a plot by Al Gore.

And the summertime varieties! Citrus tea, orange green tea (huh?), diet orange green tea (decaffeinated.) I wouldn’t mind all these marketing tricks if the product actually got better, but it hasn’t.

My choice for the world’s finest sip of iced tea: We’d been bucking square bales since nine that morning and it was too hot to eat lunch so we just laid in the shade of the wagon for a few minutes and then took at it again. The water in my thermos had gone from cool to lukewarm to full scald, and then she came tripping through the alfalfa stubble. It was like something straight out of a Grant Wood painting. Her name was Melanie she had been watching us put up hay for her father all day. Something in her tender heart took pity on the sweaty hay crew and so she fixed some tea, poured the heavenly elixir into ice-packed Mason jars, fitted a slab of rubber-banded aluminum foil over each container and like an angel of mercy, came running out to meet the wagon as we approached the barn.

Call it green, call it citrus, make it a diet drink and take out the caffeine, there is not a glass of iced tea produced in the world today that can hold a tea bag to Melanie’s nectar of the gods.

Fried chicken has suffered the same fate over the years. Although the colonel from Kentucky has put his kitchen of scientists to work to produce a thigh that will delight them from Shanghai to Moscow, nothing beats Grandma Marie’s fried chicken.

Lard… real, artery-choking lard that caused people to finally die at the age of 97 was the catalyst for the noontime delight, and Grandma would purposely knock the chicken around enough to ensure a mother lode of cracklin’s left popping in the pan awaiting her flour and milk magic. The result was a white gravy so lumpy and delicious that you’d take your fork and chase every last bit of it around your plate after the taters and biscuits were gone. Sorry Colonel, but you’ll never out-finger-lick farmhouse gravy.

Of course when you spend a hot summer’s morning walking beans in 90-degree heat, trudge the mile back to the house, wash up under the nozzle of Grandpa’s hand pump, then grab a handful of fresh lettuce right out of the garden on your way to lunch, Grandma had an advantage over factory-made chicken.

I thought about Melanie’s tea and Grandma’s chicken while attending the anniversary celebration of two good friends, Bob and Edna Esser, last week. They’d been sharing the same sorrows, joys and beds for 65 (yes… 65) years. The obvious question on everyone’s mind was how they made such an arrangement work for over half a century. Bob’s in a walker now but he still had a free hand to raise of glass of punch and attribute the successful marriage to one thing. He said, "I thank God for tough times. When we got married I farmed non-stop, night and day, while Edna taught school. When the boys came along we kept working hard. The creek got out and we sucked mud and in dry years we breathed dust, making do with fried potatoes and mush. Tell you the truth, we’ve just been too busy to argue much."

Edna agreed that it was the tough times that kept them together and happy. "I pity folks who’ve got it easy. When you’re both pushing the same rock up the hill, it’s easy to stay together. Level off the ground a bit and… well… somebody’s gonna roam around the hillside."

Commencement speakers took the stage across the nation this week with words of wisdom and platitudes of promise, all the while secretly wondering if this graduating generation might be facing some pretty tough times. Few orators were brave enough to simply state, "To tell you the truth, I just don’t know. This could be a rough few years."

That’s a shame. They missed an opportunity to advise youngsters that a stingy job market and sluggish economy might be the greatest gift they’ve ever been given. The so-called Greatest Generation didn’t become great because they owned fancy laptops and vacation condos. In fact, it was their very lack of ‘things’ that allowed them to look inward and achieve greatness.

They failed to tell them that there’s no marriage stronger than one honed in the fire of adversity and struggle. There’s no gravy more delicious than the kind you earn after a hard day’s walking beans, and there’s no tea sweeter than what’s to be had in the middle of a Midwest hayfield, chaff down the back of your shirt, and the hot sun blazing.

Sometimes the healthiest workout we get is a bit of struggle.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door, but you’ll enjoy the trip.