Just the Way Grammy Likes It

There used to be a culinary running joke in my family when something left the kitchen just a little beyond done. Upon toast popping out of the toaster a little too dark, upon bacon leaving the skillet a little too crispy, or the burger leaving the grill a little to hockey puckish, the common refrain was, “Just the way Grammy likes it.” Grammy was my namesake. I inherited her maiden name, Stanley, as my name. She was a pistol. More about that later, but now… “Just the way Grammy likes it.”

Confession time. While most of us were taught to revere our grandmother’s cooking, I must admit I’m really not confident my grandmother was a good cook? With a clear exception, her cake brownies, which were to die for, I can’t recall a single dish she ever made, really. And, you add the circumstantial evidence of “Just the way Grammy likes it.” Gulp. Was she really not a good cook? Did she burn everything? Or maybe, was it a convenient ruse created by my mother, Grammy’s daughter, who was actually the one burning everything and attributing it to her mother to deflect the shame and blame? After all, Mom is on the record as catching a microwave on fire. And you know what they say, where there’s smoke there’s fire. 

Back to this in a moment, but let’s also consider my wife’s grandmother. From the moment I started dating my now wife, I heard about Grandma’s cooking, and in particular, her acumen for preparing Thanksgiving dinner. The highest accolades for this occasion were reserved for Grandma’s creamed corn. “Grandma’s creamed corn, Grandma’s creamed corn.” Okay, you know what Grandma’s creamed corn was? Grandma’s creamed corn was corn poured out of a can with some flour and sugar added, stirred on the stovetop and poured into a serving bowl. [insert “hmm” emoji] [insert “I don’t get it” emoji]

However, this seemingly innocuous side dish, Grandma’s creamed corn, is the exact point where I learned one of my very first and most important culinary lessons…DON’T MESS WITH PEOPLE’S CORE FOOD VALUES. Grandma’s creamed corn transcended food, it was a memory, it represented the fundamental value of Thanksgiving and family. The first opportunity I had to host and prepare the Thanksgiving meal after Grandma passed, I decided to make my Mr. Fancy Pants creamed corn with bruised rosemary, roasted garlic, and Parmesan cheese. I was proud of that…until I was deafened by the chorus of ”Where is Grandma’s creamed corn?” Culinarily speaking Fancy Pants creamed corn was a masterpiece, for honoring the value to which creamed corn pointed for Grandma’s family, it was an abject failure. 

There is a connecting point here between these two women, Grammy and Grandma–the Great Depression, during which they both grew up. And, I reckon, it was the hardscrabble existence of that era necessitating personal sacrifice for the common good that was the essence permeating through their kitchens. Nothing got wasted. Make do with simplicity. Grandma’s creamed corn was never supposed to be up for a James Beard award, it was supposed to reflect her no-nonsense values and attitude of providing for everyone with what you have. 

Just the way Grammy liked it was equally as frugal and of communal value. If something got burned, it didn’t get thrown out. Grammy modeled what it meant to sacrifice by electing to eat the burned, the too done, and the less desirable. So what we used to use as a derisive term, is now a term of endearment to me as I think of all the sacrifices my grandmother made for her family for the common good. Both women’s individual experiences are single threads that weave together the collective tapestry of the Greatest Generation. 

The Greatest Generation earned this appellation because of the individual and collective acts of sacrifice for the greater good during World War II needed to overcome the tyranny and evil of Nazism. Men (and women) went off to Europe and the Pacific to fight and die for the greater good. Women went to work in factories to support the war effort and the common good. Americans of all stripes willingly practiced rationing. Rationing meant individuals and families made sacrifices for the common good. So that all could survive, common items such as gasoline, butter, sugar, and canned milk were rationed because they needed to be diverted to the war effort. 

In this light, I’m reminded of Grammy again. During World War II she lived in Paulsboro, New Jersey. Paulsboro was situated on the Delaware River and was the home of a DuPont dynamite and chemical manufacturing facility that employed most of the town, including Grammy’s family. When America entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Paulsboro became a German military target because of the DuPont plant. The very real fear was that German U-boats would traverse up the Delaware River from the Atlantic Ocean to torpedo the DuPont plant.

To combat this threat, the government asked residents of Paulsboro, other towns along the Delaware River, and up and down the Atlantic coast to participate in “brownouts” as a precaution to keep everyone safe from attack. Grammy said in addition to shutting their curtains, they were asked to dim their lights, and place heavy blankets over their windows so that U-boats couldn’t spot land-based targets and use them as range finders for their torpedoes. She said every night until the war was over they would repeat this practice–draw the curtains, dim the lights, and put the blankets over the windows to prevent the light from being seen. Personal sacrifice for the common good. 

As I said, Grammy was a pistol, a tough old bird. She drove an ice blue 65 Ford Mustang. She wore fire engine red lipstick. When I was out in the neighborhood playing as a kid, she’d lean out the back door and call for me…Stannnleeeey! It was a soil your britches kind of summons. When Grammy called, everyone dropped what they were doing and skedaddled. I used to joke saying that she missed her calling, she would have made a fine dictator for a small developing country.  

All this to say, and I don’t presume to put words in her mouth, or thoughts in her head, but I really wonder what Grammy would think about American’s response to COVID-19, specifically the plea to wear a mask as a preventative measure against spreading the coronavirus. Personal sacrifice for the common good. In his book, Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversation in the Classroom, Matthew R. Kay identifies four different aspects of conflict. That is to say when conflict is present, there are four ways to look at the conflict. 1) Facts or Data, 2) Process or Methods, 3) Purposes, and 4) Values.

In the case of COVID-19 there is no disputing the facts and data. By any measure, the United States is winning the Coronavirus race, and in a way we don’t want to… According to NPR there are 2.24 Million confirmed cases and 120,000 deaths in the United States. This includes 60,000 healthcare workers who have been infected and 300 who have died. So, the facts and data crowd (myself included) armed with irrefutable evidence believe we have an ironclad case…PUT ON A MASK. Personal sacrifice for the common good. 

However, armed with our facts and date, we run headlong into the values crowd who comes at the argument from a different angle. For many (not all) driven by the values perspective, individual freedom is a paramount value and the very essence of what it means to be an American. The, insert authority here ______________ (Experts, Scientists, Government)…has no right to abridge my Constitutional and personal rights. For many (not all) in this crowd, the common good has been demonized and coopted to mean socialism or welfare, not the wellbeing and common humanity of all that it is intended to convey. DON’T MESS WITH MY CORE VALUES…Mr. Fancy Pants. 

Yet, another point of view is the purpose crowd. Do masks even serve a real purpose? Okay, yes, I see the statistics, I agree with them, but does the mask actually prevent the spread of disease. Some “experts” say yes, some say no. So, if it may not even be effective anyway, what is the purpose of wearing a mask? Personal choice vs. common good. 

In any case, to not wear a mask is to say, yeah, no, I’m not shutting the curtains, dimming the lights, or putting up the blankets. Because… the media is exaggerating the danger of a German attack? Yes, war is bad, and people dying, but that’s to be expected? If the Germans really want to attack, they are going to attack, so what good does browning out really do anyway? Dimming the lights is an abridgment of my personal and Constitutional rights to keep my lights on? 

Folks, we appear to be at a stalemate. Though, with a hopeful perspective, Mathew R. Kay says, “This stalemate, like many other values conflicts, presents an opportunity. It’s critical that the teacher immediately push the students to the middle of the Venn diagram: where they agree.” I don’t care into which crowd you fall, my guess is ALL of us feel human life is important and worthy of protecting. That’s the middle ground of the Venn diagram, that’s our starting point. Kay goes on to say, “From this (common premise) ‘all sides’ can generate win-win solutions.”

Admittedly, this is going to be difficult because we have been slowly and purposely duped into embracing a path of zero-sum game . Instead of the common good being a value, it has been twisted to mean any value, freedom, right, or protection that someone else “gets,” is necessarily a loss for me. Zero-sum is scarcity thinking. We live, still, in one of the most abundant countries and times in the history of the world. I believe the answer lies in, and we must nurture what Kay again notes, “…the climate of mutual interest where people negotiate differences side-by-side, rather than head to head.” In recalling the works of Frederick Douglass, Kay says that head to head conflicts “pit two unlistening parties against each other in a showy case of minutiae, whereas win-win, side-by-side scenarios can launch students into the creation of solutions–a task that thoroughly reflects their intelligence.”

Part of the problem that takes away from the simplicity of our Venn diagram agreement is, according to Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, “From the earliest days of the pandemic, the coronavirus has often been treated as a political issue rather than a public health issue.” Osterholm goes on to say that the risks from COVID-19 supersede partisanship. “We will all know somebody — we will all love somebody — who will die from this disease. Eventually, there won’t be any blue states or red states. There won’t be any blue cities or red rural areas. It’ll all be COVID colored.”

The handwriting is on the wall. The toast is burned, and all we have is corn, flour, and sugar. It is high time we put aside our petty personal arguments and look toward the greater good. If we can all agree to the sanctity of human life, I believe we can belie the message of division coming from on high, and come together side-by-side for equitable, life-saving decisions. The DuPont factory is in danger; pull the curtains, dim the lights, put up the blankets. Our nation’s individual and collective health is in danger; wear the mask if for no other reason because…that’s just the way Grammy likes it.