LET THEM EAT MUSH!

Some 60 years ago, when I was a child, and long before I became a certified geezer, I would spend the weekends with my grandparents on their five-acre vegetable roadside farm. Some of my earliest memories of those overnight visits were the heavy hand tied quilts made with squares from my grandparents shirts and dresses. The quilt was so heavy that to lay under it, it was difficult to even turn over.

At daybreak, I could hear my grandfather rustling around in the kitchen getting the wood-fire stove hot enough to make oatmeal. He had a small pan that was just right for his daily preparations of mush. Silently he would eat his breakfast and then slip out into the field before the rest of the family was awake. Of course I enjoyed grandma’s bacon and eggs with toast. Sometimes we would have pancakes with real syrup. But I don’t remember ever eating oatmeal like grandpa. Only grandpa would eat the oatmeal before his morning of weeding and harvesting in the field.

As a young father of seven sons, I would try to steer my boys toward healthy living. When Halloween came around, I would offer each a dollar a pound for their candy and allow them to keep 25 or 30 pieces of candy. Each boy could earn $5-$10 for their Halloween booty. Somehow the word got out and the older boys began to encourage the younger ones to turn down the money and keeps the candy. Eventually, I wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that trick-or-treating should be abolished in the city. That definitely got a rise from many citizens as they wrote in to call me a communist and other derogatory terms.

The following week a good friend looked at me and laughed and said, “I bet you feed your kids oatmeal for breakfast.” How he knew that I will never know but he was right.

Now as I grow into full bloom as a certified geezer, I prefer, I select, and I choose oatmeal with a dash of cinnamon, topped with fruit, and a few crushed walnuts for my daily breakfast. Even on the road at hotels with a continental breakfast, oatmeal is my stay.

One may ask what have I learned in the past 60 years that I would make that a daily practice. Intellectually, I realize that Ayervada medicine, written some 5000 years ogo in Sanskrit speaks of foods that balance the body such as oatmeal. Scientifically, I could refer to studies that speak of the fiber and oatmeal’s ability to bind fats and oils to help reduce cholesterol. But all that is just chatter and talk-talk. What it really comes down to is that if I listen to my body I feel better on a breakfast over oatmeal then I do on a “truckers platter” of sausage eggs and hash browns.

I have no idea if any of my sons choose oatmeal for breakfast. I will give them another 40 years to figure that out for themselves.

But for myself, as I board a cruise to Alaska on a line that prides itself in food par excellent with eggs Benedict and Belgium waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, I will probably surprise the waiters when they asked me what I would like for breakfast. Oatmeal! The breakfast of champions and geezers!