butter sandwiches

colorless and cold Saturday afternoons lead to hunger between the commercials when you are ten years old. some grainy black and white movie, scarely palatable drama and a near teary eyed forlorn love scene, is painfully moving along on our tv. Mom is surrounded and covered with the latest afghan she crochets in finally having achieved her weekend peace.

my brothers drift in and out of the living room like sentinels checking on the camp of womenfolk and returning to some larger than life preteen boy plan in their room. i remain meek and bleak, feeling that mistaken zygote sensation again, defined to me as an adult reader by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD as: “was i really meant to be part of this family?!?”.

the movie begins again, after three to four nails on the chalkboard commercials. my mom is whipping out rows of warmth and color. she readjusts her back and behind, spreading out her work on her lap. she smiles in the accomplishment and then at me. this is why i endure the movie, the splash of sunshine to spend time with her.

the soldiers have been keeping a loose claim on the movie plot with their intermittent watches in the ‘camp’. now that the celluloid beast nears its end, all are settled in for the finale, soldiers, mom and the circling crochet hook, and me. it ends predictably. my brothers and i are relieved the movie is over; my mom lingers teary eyed exclaiming her still girl-like crush on the long dead actor.

we kids are hungry. allowing enough time for the emotional swell to settle, one of us, i forget who, announces the dilemma. we had filled up earlier on the no cook breakfast rule of cereal and milk during a double wrestling match length of Saturday cartoons. our little bodies now crave some real food. mom’s eyes remain on the hook and feeding lengths of yarn now several rows deeper in girth. then she begins ‘the story’.

“have you ever heard of butter sandwiches?” we look at each other in queried consensus and then back to mom to say no. she re gales us with World War II times of thrift and food rations. butter and sugar were ‘rationed’. mom painstakingly explained ration books, tokens, lines, and finally coveted times when families did receive, butter and sugar. the rationing she detailed even included women’s silk stockings. we really didn’t care about hosiery. we were hungry.

to participate in rationing was part of a patriotic duty, mom recalls. to do without was doing your part for the war effort. patriotism didn’t carry much weight with the three of us still held in this pre late lunch diatribe. mom, get to the point, please! also, we were being preened in an anti-government based religion, not having been able to say the pledge of allegiance in our own classrooms, nor wave a tiny flag merrily on the fourth of July. how did this matter to us?

we were about to find out.

mom continued. now another row or two deeper in the afghan, she revealed a special treat we had never experienced that was prized by little boys and girls of her time. some poorer children she explained couldn’t even have butter. they had an unsavory replica known as ‘oleo’. i still gag at the thought of it. mom described oleo as lard that had been colored with an orange yellow food dye to make it appear as if it were butter. these children she explained, were grateful to even have their rationed ‘oleo’. mom’s family, she affirmed, did not have to pine to this wartime degree. butter came with sugar rations and then the treat was realized. yes, children, butter sandwiches.

as this point we were so hungry, we were in. mom coached from the couch, never missing a stitch, how to create these wartime delights. the white bread was easy to find. it took us a bit longer for the sugar. i slowed the process by taking the back of a teaspoon and crushing some of the hardened rock sugar crystals that had formed on top of our sugar cache in the now open canister. smooth sugar glistened and spilled out. the butter was a drag because it was cold, a stick straight from the frig. one of us ran out to mom for advice. she suggested we cut it deli style thin and place the tabs over the surface of a slice of white bread. then the mess began. the last step was of course to sprinkle the entire open face of bread and butter tabs with sugar, fold it in half, and take a bite. we were kids, so more was better. soon shovelfuls of sugar, previously topping the butter, now began pouring on the kitchen counters and tiled floor as three hungry country kids bit into their ‘butter sandwiches’. we noticed and bolted for the kitchen sink to finish even the crusts. mom announced we had now actually participated in a bit of history with our late lunch.

at first, it felt really cool, like a time traveler, but then my stomach got sick. my brothers dove in for a second sandwich. mom even set down the crochet hook and left the couch corner cavern to make one for herself. disgusted by the wasted morning and happenstance food, i retreated to my room. this was my weekend too. i wished to create, learn, be surprised, flourish. instead I saw the day turning into night, through my bedroom window as i lie on my bed, soon to bring the blues of a sunken sunset to snow drifts outside and then inside to my heart.

i felt snookered by the butter sandwich story. the root vegetables of our summer garden are what my little body craved; sweet baby carrots pulled up to show off twisty orange roots, eaten when soil scarcely scrubbed them clean on a t-shirt, fresh tomatoes from the vine, and sweet corn that left string tassels in your teeth. i inwardly vowed never to eat butter again.

as i grew, the rift became a chasm. retreats to my room became custom, reading ancient history annals and details of archaeological finds to feed my head. books and sketchpads now occupied my time as to how i wished to spend it. i traversed the gradual incline of decision to a plant based diet. even to this day, seeds and raisins are my mainstay. still the lingering feeling of being the mistaken fertilized egg continued, the zygote who grew too excited in getting to their new family, jumping early from the basket to land in the wrong home.

as an adult i found others that felt the same way. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote and sang:

“No one I think is in my tree

I mean it must be high or low

That is you can’t, you know, tune in

But it’s all right

That is I think it’s not too bad” *

Strawberry Fields Forever became the lullaby for my two daughters. we surrounded ourselves with books. i disconnected the cable tv service, much too late, when the girls were in high school after a divorce. my sweethearts are twenty-five and twenty-eight now. this is the benchmark of the time since i last watched tv.

as a child, and now nearly a senior, i still work to push past the norm, molding like with well-used kindergarten modeling clay, wishing to see, eat, breathe, touch, and feel only what is real. the changes extend to an aversion of the popular acceptance of the magical spiritual netherworld that bound me to years, fearful, behind closed doors, arrogant of logical thought, and lost from opportunities.

this is not a crybaby story. this is a grocery list, that is revised, crossed out and written over with a telephone number from someone you can’t remember, that list scribbled on an envelope back, ending with 'call mom', found in a pocket of your old coat with a crumpled five-dollar bill and change stuck to a fuzzy cherry cough drop. it is a vulnerable snap shot memory recall ~ that sums up where you are now and where/when you have landed in the Tardis.

it goes back to butter sandwiches. not choosing the easy fake for your stomach or your mind. taking the time to culture a food and framework your lifestyle. no proprietary ego accompanies this choice in my regard. Ben Franklin noted how the colonies benefited from his ‘Library Company’ book loaning invention. Ben shares:

‘ “The libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans,”

Franklin later noted, and

“made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent

as the most gentlemen from other countries.” ‘**

i am not intelligent. the more i learn, the more i see how little i really know. i am hungry, starving continuously for the root vegetables of knowledge, the deep buried in the ground, wishing to be unearthed and enjoyed truths of authors old and new. this hunger changes one in their life preferences as well. the sugary glisten of superficial media’s entertainment seems stomach sickening. the richness they lure is really nothing more than cold butter on white bread.

been there. no thank you.

the Beatle’s words helped me to embrace that it’s ok if no one else is “in my tree”. discontent turns to acceptance of my family and those around me who chose not to embrace deeper ways of thinking. the shyness for the world’s lemming lure is a benefit for thrift, another plus! most things we own are second hand and/or re-purposed. 

the “dream” Lennon/McCartney talk about in ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ was shaken for me when i recently came across the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. his 1864 ‘Notes from the Underground’ now challenge me to go deeper than the superficial nourishing roots I had chosen with his “Twice two makes four without my will” *** arithmetic.

Dostoyevsky inspires me to stand strong against mockers of my life choices when he invites:

“Laugh away;

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.”***

then he cuts me deeper than any loss to challenge:

 “Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of LES ANIMAUX DOMESTIQUE-such as the ants, the sheep, and so on.” ***

these words leave me stumbling, having dug deeper, to know that i have settled comfortably, to love the “edifice from a distance” ~ my uncompleted life goals.

physical pain, as Dostoyevsky also reminds, need not be something that we revel in as well to block personal progress. he describes a responsible gentleman’s recoil response to his own toothache:

“His moans become nasty, disgustingly malignant, and go on for whole days and nights. And of course he knows himself that he is doing himself no sort of good with his moans; he knows better than anyone that he is only lacerating and harassing himself and others for nothing; he knows that even the audience before whom he is making his efforts, and his whole family listen to him in loathing, do not put a ha’porth of faith in him, and inwardly understand that he might moan differently, more simply without trills and flourishes, and that he is only amusing himself like that from ill-humour, from malignancy.” ***

i have unearthed a food deeper than those encountered before. sources that challenge me more than the childish decision to logically wish nutritious meals instead of butter sandwiches. this new root of knowledge, from Dostoyevsky’s ‘Notes from the Underground’, unwraps me to face the novice, myself, to fortify, yes, continue to dig deeper for personal growth and prospective.

nourished, does one build and then bravely occupy? can one quiet the theater of illness to solely suffer the unfolding play alone, all the while curtains remaining closed?

as if by digging with a soup spoon or steam shovel, these are the questions of choice faced when underground.

Jim Capaldi, of the group Traffic, released a song in 1971 on the album (remember albums?) The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, the song being called: ‘Light Up Or Leave Me Alone’. I think that sums it up.

“Twice two makes four without my will” *** arithmetic downer again. maybe, yet Dostoyevsky provides a relieving exhale:

“Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give anything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.” ***

© ruth follmann

Bibiliograpy:

* Lennon-McCartney. Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, 1967. Single. Magical Mystery   Tour, 1967. Album

** Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.

*** Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. Dodo Press, 1977.