Ain’t Nothing Gonna Fill Ya Like Biscuits Gonna Fill Ya

I had the good fortune to have biscuits and gravy twice in the past week.  The time I made it for myself the biscuits were from a beginner’s scratch recipe and came out of the oven misshapen but delicious.  The gravy was from a cheap store-bought mix.  Yesterday a friend made it with beautiful, fluffy biscuits and plenty of Jimmy Dean sausage mixed into the gravy.  It was  wonderful.  But the best thing about a good plate of biscuits and gravy is it makes me want to chop wood.¹

Somehow those things are linked in my heart.  I think the Texan heritage I got from my Dad is a factor, probably also the time I spent in the Appalachian mountains while a missionary.  But I suspect that we all have this affinity inside us.  (If a person has recently seen “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”, that alone may be enough to forge the subconscious connection.)  We live in a world of mechanical ease and many households lost the necessity of manual labor a generation or two ago.  But there’s something primevally satisfying about woodchopping that nobody should miss out on.

The first man who shared this secret with me lived in the mountains of Virginia, but he wasn’t a typical backwoodsman.  He had a high-level position at a local company that made radar-equipped nosecones for US military jets and built his own airplane in his spare time.  We went with him to his backyard one day and took turns chopping a large pile of firewood. The ax was big, like a honed sledgehammer, and fairly heavy; with each swing I tried to be as much like John Henry as I could.  Eventually I got at least respectable accuracy. 

Maybe you know what I’m talking about.  If not, smell freshly chopped cherry once and you’ll get it.  Hit that sweet spot right in line with a crack on the tree rings—feel the wood burst apart as if it had wanted to for ages—and what I say won’t sound as much like sentimental hogwash.  Come in for dinner knowing you’ve left your sweat out on that rocky ground, your muscles aching but alive, invigorated.  It feels so good.  When Adam had to leave the Garden of Eden the Lord told him that from now on he’d have to obtain bread by the “sweat of his brow”.²  So I guess he set the example.

Because of the physical ease of the modern world our bodies do not naturally gain the same strength and toughness that our ancestors had.  Many people lift weights or run to reclaim it, which is good.  But there’s a “true grit” aspect of life that we still miss. Other activities that feed our frontiersman instinct include riding a horse, building things outside, climbing trees, and even tending a garden.  So, Rawhides of the world—eat your biscuits and get to work!

                                                                                        

Notes

1. Grits, cornbread, and Waffle House hash-browns “all-the-way” also qualify as gut-charging foods.

2. Genesis 3:19 (KJV)

(Picture of sparrow, axe, and barrelhead originally drawn by Walter Crane for a book of Grimm’s fairy tales translated from German by Lucy Crane published in 1882 and uploaded to the Creative Commons clipart archive by johnny_automatic on 15 January 2008. Truly a group effort.)

The Reading Room

This morning I discovered a small library in the bottom level of the Maeser building–which may be the oldest, most stately building on the BYU campus.  As I browsed the titles on the shelves and basked in the undisturbed silence, a peculiar emotion came over me. Actually, I felt like what Frank Sinatra sang in an old jazz standard:

                                                                                                 

“I saw you last night and got that old feeling;
When you came in sight I got that old feeling.
The moment that you passed by I felt a thrill,
And when you caught my eye my heart stood still.” ¹

I mean this in all seriousness, as silly as it may sound. (Emotions are a vital, if sometimes dramatic, part of who we are.)  Yeah, I’ll concede that it’s weird to apply these words to a secluded basement library; I’m sure that eventually I’ll be applying it to a special girl yet to be determined…but that’s not today’s subject.

Anyway, the business, history, statistics, and other classes I’ve been taking are great, and have an important place in this world.  But there’s something I love about good poetry, writing, art, and philosophy–something I was reminded of when I stepped into the reading room and saw books by Whitman, Sophocles, etc.  David O McKay called the literary greats the “minor prophets”–and he would know.  ² They’re observers and articulators of life.  I like to bask in that centuries-old atmosphere of liberal commentary.  I like to fellowship with the ideas and feelings they crafted and see the world with a little more resolution.

Here’s an interesting addition: a later line in that song is,
                 

“There’ll be no new romance for me,

  It’s foolish to start,

  While that old feeling is still in my heart.”

No major I’ve investigated yet is as exciting to me as the anticipation of diving into that library.  But majors like business or pre-law are so employable and practical.  Eventually I’ll have a family to provide for, too.  I’m glad I don’t have to commit to one or the other yet.  Whichever I choose, now that I’ve found the reading room I have a nice place to go for occasional solitude and refocusing.

Notes

1. “That Old Feeling” music by Lew Brown, lyrics by Sammy Fain, published in 1937

2. Douglas Callister, “Our Refined Heavenly Home”, Ensign, June 2009