CHAPTER 8
GOOD EATS

“The belly is ungrateful - it always forgets we already gave it something.”
Russian Proverb

“And then the one about Benny being born: Rose and I started out that mornin’’ on an old ‘54 Chevrolet I had bought from Bob Harris and she was drivin. But we made it to the hospital and she was all day havin’ Benny. Long before night, she got in to the depth of her labor and she called the nurses in there and told them she wanted her doctor to come in. She had paid him all along and he had promised her that this wouldn’t be any trouble at all and she wanted to see him. Well, the nurse said, “Honey, there is nothin’ he can do. All of us have had our children this way. Nothin’ can be done.” And Rose said, ‘Well, I don’t reckon it really matters, I’m dyin’ anyhow!’ And my father used to love to have me tell that!”

The Audio Journal of Harold Martin

July 24 is my birthday, and for as long as I can remember, my father told my birth story on that day. He also told a version of his own birth, too:

On November 25, 1925, Dr. Sam Rucker, Sr. drove a buggy from his home in Moneta to the home of Carleton and Fawnie Martin in Huddleston. On the way to deliver my father, he made two stops, one to pick up Jirdie Martin, the other for Sally Huffman, the newborn’s future grandmothers. My father was brought into the world with little difficulty, and after the birth, the grandmothers fixed the doctor a meal of fried eggs, ham, apples and biscuits. Daddy never forgot this, because, as he often told me, his parents were young and didn’t “have two nickels to rub together,” but they did have good food to eat.
A chronic dieter in her early sixties once told me that she was going to try a “modified” South Beach diet. This person had examined Atkins and other popular diet plans and found this new version of an old version to be the key to a thinner waistline. Strange, I thought. Why not just count calories? Besides, time passes, we age and get thicker in the process. We just cannot fight time.
Truly, one of the pleasures of getting older is when you realize that you are not supposed to look in your forties, fifties or sixties the way you did in your twenties.
Once, while driving down a Roanoke City street, I passed a small sign on a light pole that read, “I lost 40 pounds in two months.” A phone number was also included with this dubious declaration. My first thought was directed at it’s writer: “You lost 40 pounds in two months? Have you been ill?” My second and final frightening realization was someone overly concerned with a few unwanted pounds will be calling that number.
We exercise more than ever, but we get bigger. The folly of dieting is the more we try, the more we fail. We exercise, and the effort makes us hungry. We exercise and then feel like we deserve a reward for the effort and indulge in a treat. Exercise builds muscle, which weighs more than fat, so we gain weight. We eat low-fat, light or otherwise low-calorie foods to keep off the pounds but still have cravings for a candy bar. Subsequently we inhale 400 calories of bland low-fat cookies when one 270-calorie candy bar would have satisfied our urge.
The hungry people of the world must be laughing at us. In Wilson Ukakas’ Uganda, men not fishing for sport do not care if their catch is prepared in the frying pan or on the broiler.

Ironically, food is the Enemy Number 1 of Americans who can afford to buy groceries. We try to avoid food. We say that a doughnut is “bad” for us. But, there was a time when farm folks felt very lucky to have food, and they spent most of their time just trying to get enough of it.
“Harold, you’re just tryin’ to set some money aside for a rainy day,” Ed Blankenship, an older, neighboring farmer, commented to my young struggling father many years ago. “But in my day, “ he said, “we were just tryin’ to find enough to eat!”
Some people had a rough time of it, too. November brought with it what farmers called “hog killin’ weather,”that time when it was cold enough to butcher hogs for the winter meat. Some families would need to sell the hams, the prime cuts, to neighbors or general stores so they would have a little extra spending money. My father said they were fortunate because they never had to do that. Granddaddy Martin had a good job in Roanoke at the American Viscose and a farm in Moneta, too. The family raised the meat and vegetables they ate. They had their own eggs and butter and made bread at home. For many families, money from a small tobacco crop was the only money they ever had, and it only came once a year.
In my father’s diary dated November 11, 1986, the entry reads:

“Today is my 61st birthday. Went over to mother’s this morning and she told the birth story again. The doctor picked up Momma Jirdie and she came down with him. Ma Jirdie and Mommie Kate had ham and eggs for the doctor’s breakfast. My dad had good eats in his house at 23 years of age!”

Ham and eggs aren’t considered “good eats” anymore, though. They are laden with fat, loaded with cholesterol, and are artery-cloggers. They will kill us, we are told. But, not having them could kill us, too.

My father would say jokingly that he was in his thirties before he ever heard the word “calorie.” Exercise was not a choice for his parents or for him. Farmers had no choice but to work to be able to eat. I have heard my Grandma Martin remark of a young lady “Why, look at her! She’s so pretty and fat!” But her observation was not an insult; she meant that the young lady had enough to eat.
Most Americans have enough to eat now. Oddly, though, the tables have turned; wealthy people tend to be thinner, while poorer people tend to be heavier. There is a danger in not having enough to ea but, ironically, there is a danger in having more than enough to eat. That is a concept that one young farm couple, on a cold winter night in 1925 with a newborn son, would have never been able to grasp.
Anyone who tries to lose 40 pounds in two months won’t be able to grasp it, either.