Time for something I just made up out of the cesspool of my mind.

The Casserole Brigade

By Jimmie von Tungeln

The Casserole Brigade started showing up two days after Dora Mae’s funeral. There were a half-dozen members appearing from the mist of John Paul’s despondency like soldiers emerging in dim shapes from no-man’s land. To them, he appeared numb and vulnerable, no doubt dazed from the damage his loss had caused, so suddenly and unexpectedly had it burst upon him. Easy pickings.

At first, there were evening treats designed to soften him up for later assaults. A plate of spaghetti or a surplus Chicken Tetrazzini from a dinner for a sister. “My late husband used to call it “Chicken Tetrachloride” but then he always had more money than taste, ahem.”

And of course there were the casseroles. They came in every form imaginable and some that, quite frankly, John Paul could never have imagined. There were ham and cheese casseroles, egg and cheese casseroles, egg and anything casseroles, and casseroles made, apparently from whatever lay uneaten in a refrigerator at any given moment. Consuelo Remindez, wife of the late manager of “La Casa Ensinada” even once brought him a Chili Relleno casserole that had nearly taken off the top of his head. His vote for most bizarre was though, for a considerable length of time, a broccoli and corn bread casserole that Emily Kesterson had left at his door one evening with a note that said simply, “We must each find a way to get over our grief.”

She was always the shy one.

She would come late, and on the few times she knocked on his door, she knocked softly, so softly he could scarcely discern it from the noise of the city.

“I’m sorry.” That’s the way she always began.

The others weren’t as subtle. Marcella Goodwin, for example, would catch him in the lobby waiting for the elevator. “Gonna bring you a brand new dish tonight,” she would announce in a voice audible to anyone near. “That’ll be two, counting me, har har.”

Folks felt good about it. John Paul and Dora Mae never did seem that they could afford to live in the building. He must be suffering both emotionally and financially, it was surmised. A little help from the ladies here and there must have been welcome. Everyone commented on how well John Paul seemed to be doing. Besides, he enjoyed the casseroles and welcomed them, most of them at least. As long as he smiled and dined, they kept coming like products on an assembly line.

It went on like this for some time. When those at the morning coffee gathering tried to remember later, reminisces ranged from a month to three months. At any rate, it was long enough for Parker Thompson to start a pool. He called it the “Land John Paul Pool” and it is whispered that he had collected nearly a hundred dollars before the news hit the condo like a tsunami.

One day he just wasn’t there anymore.

“Not here?” Someone asked. “You mean he went on a trip?”
 “No,” a daughter explained. “He and a friend moved to New York.”

“You mean he had a girl friend?” Marcella said. “Whose casserole won?”

“No, it was his friend Fred.”

“Fred?”

“Yes, they have leased a place in Manhattan.” Complete silence settled on the room. From that day, no one ever mentioned his name again, much less the power of the casserole. 

Reconciliation: Day Nine

 I’m not quite sure why, but there is lots of controversy today about our LGBT brothers and sisters. Seems everyone has an opinion. I know that I have mine. And I will try to understand yours.

Mine isn’t based on religion. I think religion should be limited to a spiritual examination of one’s own self and not of others. Again, I learned that from The Galilean.  That said, my opinion, if that’s what we may call it, derives from science. If Watson and Crick led us anywhere, they led us to a glimpse of how vastly complicated is the human genome.

Although I’m not smart enough or educated enough to understand the makeup of the DNA structure, I can, barely, glimpse its marvelous complexity, and see how a minor connection here and there can determine our sexual preferences.

It’s that simple, again in my opinion. Some of us are born one way and some another. We all, as fertilized eggs, start out as female. In fact, Stephen Jay Gould wrote that all mammals start as amazingly similar fetuses. Phsycial diversity occurs with devlopment, as should mental diversity.

 Anyway, a less fortunate (as ranked within our household) fetus will undergo a fold here and a wrap there and eventually produce a male of the species. I don’t find it hard to believe at all that somewhere in this amazing process, a sexual preference is formed that transcends the male-female preference orientation. Moreover, I can easily imagine how a fetus of one gender becomes transplanted as that of another gender. Don't know why. It just does.

It is just science, I believe, not sin, not a conscious choice, and certainly not a fit subject for the judgement of others. It is a wondrously complicated Universe in which we are fortunate enough to exist for a brief millisecond, and the quiet contemplation of it, it seems to me, is much more satisfying than spending time nourishing our prejudices, whether from the Bible, the locker room, or the coffee shop.

You may believe differently. I will try to understand that, to the extent that your belief is based on sound analysis, and you don’t allow your belief to escalate into some sort of hegemonic torment—physical, legal, or mental.

Marriage among the similar sexes? If you wish to attend a church that doesn’t allow that, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution allows it. Remember though, marriage between two people is a fairly recent idea. Will and Ariel Durant suggested that marriage was originally devised, in Western civilization, as a mechanism whereby a man could possess a legal claim to, and protection of, his harem.

I don’t think my wife would buy into that concept in this day and time. My point? Ancient concepts of morality can, do, and should change.

Finally, for those who may find their images of what same-sex partners do in the privacy of their bedrooms distasteful, think of something else, like, maybe helping the poor, or the least of those among us. It is accepted dogma that one can’t think of two things at once. We should all try to choose wisely.

As for distasteful acts, consider how the orchids must feel when they contemplate what goes on in your bedroom under the guise of procreation.

And, for the individual who once reported the claim by a professor at a major central Arkansas university (no, not mine), I have found absolutely no evidence whatsoever that one can actually determine if someone is gay by a bump in a certain spot on their forehead. Sorry.

Just thinking.