Taco Bell, Bugs, and a Graceful Diagnosis
Taco Bell. Not the Mexican phone company. The other one. That one with Nachos Grande, Taco Supreme, Soft Tacos, Lemonade, little packets of mild sauce, black plastic spoonorks wrapped in shriveled-up plastic. Yes, that one. Where I challenge my arteries on a weekly basis.
My vantage point was such that I didn’t pay particular attention to the elderly gentlemen who selected and occupied a table in my direct line of sight. In fact, I paid no attention to him at all. Until, that is, until something caught my eye with a motion I was totally not expecting.
For it was the bowing of his head that triggered something within me. An old head. An old white-haired head. A balding and thinning white-haired head. And when he bowed his head, his lips moved. The movement of grace and gratitude for that of which he was about to partake.
In a few moments, the whispering stopped. He hesitated a moment. Raised his head. Reached for several packets of the “pink stuff”, shook them to get the powder sweetener to settle to the bottom, ripped the tops off and poured the stuff into his extra large cup. Must have been iced tea. Nothing else in the fountain would need that kind of sweetening.
His clothing was rough. A chocolaty brown pair of trousers and shirt. Black half-wellington boots of some kind. Garish yellow logos over his left breast pocket and on his back. A rip in the seam in the side of his shirt. A really beat-up leather phone case saddling his belt.
And I watched him. Eat. The motions. The rituals. The arranging of things on the tray.
Three wrapped up tacos of some kind. Each in their little paper envelope. He would carefully unwrap one. Pick up two little packets of sauce. Snap them and flick them with his index finger to get the contents to settle. Stick the tops of the foil packets in his teeth and tear them open. Spit out the foil fragment. Had to have his natural teeth. Gold Bond Denture Cream isn’t that good.
As parts and pieces of the lettuce and tomatoes and cheese would fall out the side and land in the paper envelope, he would lick his fingers, stab the wayward ingredients, and nearly lick the paper clean.
I watched him bite. Ingest. Chew. And chew. And chew. Smack his lips. Lick his fingers. Clean out the paper envelope.
For one of the packages, he opened a salt packet, and dumped the whole thing over the food item. If he was hypertensive, he was not in compliance.
I simply had to know what those logos said. This guy, looking the part of being in his upper seventies and all. Who and what was he doing?
So I made a point of dumping the refuse of my artery attack in a waste bin on the opposite side of the eating area. And then made the non-obvious look of looking to ascertain his identity.
His name was “Jerrell.” Sewn in that garish greeny-yellow over his right breast pocket. And the logo. “County Pest Control.”
When I got out to the parking lot, the vehicle next to mine, a white pick up truck with several bins in the back, was labeled “County Pest Control.” On the back was the marketing slogan “Somthin’ buggin’ ya?’ . . . call 800 – xxx - xxxx .”
When that unexpected motion jarred my routine, I had no idea there would be something bugging me.
It has been years now, many years, since I bowed my head to say grace.
It is not that I am not grateful for the bounty of the earth of which I partake. Not at all. For I truly am.
It is not the pro forma ritual of praying like the hypocrite in the temple, the in-your-face holiness of one’s visible works.
It is not that I deny the source of my physical strength. For I understand the chemistry of the assimilation, the ingestion, the digestion, the absorption, the transport, the metabolism, the elimination of the essential components of life.
It is not that I deny that a God, any God, all gods, have had a direct hand in preparing my victuals. It was not even my resentment of the Archer Daniel Midlands, the Tysons, the Monsantos, the Iowa Beef Packers of the multi-national agriculture conglomerates that have bastardized my food supply.
It is not my obstinate insistence that it was me, my work, that provided the money to procure that chain of mystic chemistry.
But it was the memories of childhood.
Frightened at church school, that when it came my turn to say “Grace,” or as my working class family called it, “The Blessing,” before the noon meal, I would not know what to say. My silly little “Dear Jesus, thank you for this food. Amen” seemed so childish and trite. And as a trite child, I knew that.
And then learning from a PK (preacher’s kid) a more sophisticated rendition, of which all of us kids quickly adopted: “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. Amen.”
With the rite of passage to high school, it became “For the bounties of the harvest, Oh Lord, and for this food of which we are about to partake to nourish our bodies and souls, we are truly thankful. Amen.”
And listening to my WASP father joke about how the Catholics did it in Latin: “Grace be here, and grace be there, and grace be all over the table. Pick up your knife and fork and eat all you’re able. Amen.”
And then those family gatherings, were the senior male present would pontificate over the food, both trying to and yet trying not to, to sound too ridiculously theological. For it was some kind of badge of honor for a lay person to really lay out a theological smorgasbord of morsels of thanksgiving. After the blessing, some crazy uncle from the closet would snicker in a near inaudible way that if the prayer had gone any longer, the food would be stone cold.
And then teaching food science in a Seventh-day Adventist college, getting to the section on food safety, telling them about HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, discrete steps that are accomplished to kill pathogens in food, such as heating a product to 165 degrees F for 15 seconds; the principle of keeping it cold, keeping it hot, or not keeping it long), pointing out the food safety minefield of a church potluck dinner. And my only advice was for the group to find the member at the potluck with the best connection to God, and to have that person plead for the safety of the food on everyone’s behalf.
I vividly recall a 50’s family in our church with a son and daughter of similar ages to myself and my younger sister. Those kid’s father was a suit of some kind, not a working stiff like my father. But they invited us over to their home for dinner one time after church. What a thrill for me. For that kind of experience was a rare experience indeed. Just to see how another might live. And how that boy taught me the game “Battleship,” with the goal of sinking subs and destroyers and cruisers.
But it was what happened after the dinner that stuck with me.
For certain, there was the obligatory grace at the beginning of the meal.
But at the end, when the children asked for permission to be excused from the table, they robotically moved to the side of their father and personally thanked him for the food that they had eaten.
Later, my father had made some reference to it being sort of Nazi-like. I knew not of what he meant . . .
An unexpected motion in a Taco Bell.
That ritual of that elderly gentlemen kind of ripping me apart. Bugging me into thinking of things I have not thought of in one long, long time.
The saying, or the not saying, of grace.
Be it in public or private.
It hit me that it is truly a sentinel marker on one’s spiritual journey.
Ya. It does bug me. Because I honestly don’t know of just what it is, that it is diagnostic of.
The Refectory Manager
My vantage point was such that I didn’t pay particular attention to the elderly gentlemen who selected and occupied a table in my direct line of sight. In fact, I paid no attention to him at all. Until, that is, until something caught my eye with a motion I was totally not expecting.
For it was the bowing of his head that triggered something within me. An old head. An old white-haired head. A balding and thinning white-haired head. And when he bowed his head, his lips moved. The movement of grace and gratitude for that of which he was about to partake.
In a few moments, the whispering stopped. He hesitated a moment. Raised his head. Reached for several packets of the “pink stuff”, shook them to get the powder sweetener to settle to the bottom, ripped the tops off and poured the stuff into his extra large cup. Must have been iced tea. Nothing else in the fountain would need that kind of sweetening.
His clothing was rough. A chocolaty brown pair of trousers and shirt. Black half-wellington boots of some kind. Garish yellow logos over his left breast pocket and on his back. A rip in the seam in the side of his shirt. A really beat-up leather phone case saddling his belt.
And I watched him. Eat. The motions. The rituals. The arranging of things on the tray.
Three wrapped up tacos of some kind. Each in their little paper envelope. He would carefully unwrap one. Pick up two little packets of sauce. Snap them and flick them with his index finger to get the contents to settle. Stick the tops of the foil packets in his teeth and tear them open. Spit out the foil fragment. Had to have his natural teeth. Gold Bond Denture Cream isn’t that good.
As parts and pieces of the lettuce and tomatoes and cheese would fall out the side and land in the paper envelope, he would lick his fingers, stab the wayward ingredients, and nearly lick the paper clean.
I watched him bite. Ingest. Chew. And chew. And chew. Smack his lips. Lick his fingers. Clean out the paper envelope.
For one of the packages, he opened a salt packet, and dumped the whole thing over the food item. If he was hypertensive, he was not in compliance.
I simply had to know what those logos said. This guy, looking the part of being in his upper seventies and all. Who and what was he doing?
So I made a point of dumping the refuse of my artery attack in a waste bin on the opposite side of the eating area. And then made the non-obvious look of looking to ascertain his identity.
His name was “Jerrell.” Sewn in that garish greeny-yellow over his right breast pocket. And the logo. “County Pest Control.”
When I got out to the parking lot, the vehicle next to mine, a white pick up truck with several bins in the back, was labeled “County Pest Control.” On the back was the marketing slogan “Somthin’ buggin’ ya?’ . . . call 800 – xxx - xxxx .”
When that unexpected motion jarred my routine, I had no idea there would be something bugging me.
It has been years now, many years, since I bowed my head to say grace.
It is not that I am not grateful for the bounty of the earth of which I partake. Not at all. For I truly am.
It is not the pro forma ritual of praying like the hypocrite in the temple, the in-your-face holiness of one’s visible works.
It is not that I deny the source of my physical strength. For I understand the chemistry of the assimilation, the ingestion, the digestion, the absorption, the transport, the metabolism, the elimination of the essential components of life.
It is not that I deny that a God, any God, all gods, have had a direct hand in preparing my victuals. It was not even my resentment of the Archer Daniel Midlands, the Tysons, the Monsantos, the Iowa Beef Packers of the multi-national agriculture conglomerates that have bastardized my food supply.
It is not my obstinate insistence that it was me, my work, that provided the money to procure that chain of mystic chemistry.
But it was the memories of childhood.
Frightened at church school, that when it came my turn to say “Grace,” or as my working class family called it, “The Blessing,” before the noon meal, I would not know what to say. My silly little “Dear Jesus, thank you for this food. Amen” seemed so childish and trite. And as a trite child, I knew that.
And then learning from a PK (preacher’s kid) a more sophisticated rendition, of which all of us kids quickly adopted: “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. Amen.”
With the rite of passage to high school, it became “For the bounties of the harvest, Oh Lord, and for this food of which we are about to partake to nourish our bodies and souls, we are truly thankful. Amen.”
And listening to my WASP father joke about how the Catholics did it in Latin: “Grace be here, and grace be there, and grace be all over the table. Pick up your knife and fork and eat all you’re able. Amen.”
And then those family gatherings, were the senior male present would pontificate over the food, both trying to and yet trying not to, to sound too ridiculously theological. For it was some kind of badge of honor for a lay person to really lay out a theological smorgasbord of morsels of thanksgiving. After the blessing, some crazy uncle from the closet would snicker in a near inaudible way that if the prayer had gone any longer, the food would be stone cold.
And then teaching food science in a Seventh-day Adventist college, getting to the section on food safety, telling them about HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, discrete steps that are accomplished to kill pathogens in food, such as heating a product to 165 degrees F for 15 seconds; the principle of keeping it cold, keeping it hot, or not keeping it long), pointing out the food safety minefield of a church potluck dinner. And my only advice was for the group to find the member at the potluck with the best connection to God, and to have that person plead for the safety of the food on everyone’s behalf.
I vividly recall a 50’s family in our church with a son and daughter of similar ages to myself and my younger sister. Those kid’s father was a suit of some kind, not a working stiff like my father. But they invited us over to their home for dinner one time after church. What a thrill for me. For that kind of experience was a rare experience indeed. Just to see how another might live. And how that boy taught me the game “Battleship,” with the goal of sinking subs and destroyers and cruisers.
But it was what happened after the dinner that stuck with me.
For certain, there was the obligatory grace at the beginning of the meal.
But at the end, when the children asked for permission to be excused from the table, they robotically moved to the side of their father and personally thanked him for the food that they had eaten.
Later, my father had made some reference to it being sort of Nazi-like. I knew not of what he meant . . .
An unexpected motion in a Taco Bell.
That ritual of that elderly gentlemen kind of ripping me apart. Bugging me into thinking of things I have not thought of in one long, long time.
The saying, or the not saying, of grace.
Be it in public or private.
It hit me that it is truly a sentinel marker on one’s spiritual journey.
Ya. It does bug me. Because I honestly don’t know of just what it is, that it is diagnostic of.
The Refectory Manager
posted by The Refectory Manager | 5:46 PM
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