*** The following article was written and submitted by Lenora Good, the granddaughter of Carl Henry "Skipper" McBrayer. This originally appeared in the August 2006 issue of Grit Magazine as:

‘Rule of Three’ Made Texas Meal a Challenge

Rule of Three

--by Lenora Rain-Lee Good

 

When I was a child, we were poor (though I didn’t know it), which meant food wasn’t to be wasted—ever. Manners were paramount, so I was raised with the rule of three: At each meal I would take three bites of whatever food was offered, and I would eat those three bites. Should I not care for the food, the next time it was offered I was permitted to either pass it quietly, or say, “No, thank you.” I was never permitted to make faces or comments along the lines of “yuck!” though I was allowed to ask, politely, what something was. Growing up under the rule of three was, as far as I’m concerned, a good way to grow. Today I will try anything classified as dibble by a member of the human race. Well, almost anything.

My mom’s hobby since before I was born was Chinese cooking, so I grew up eating a lot of different foods, not all of which were Chinese. If the butcher got in a cheap piece of meat or fish, Mom bought it, cooked it, and we ate it. We even had whale steaks—once. As I recall, no one could get past the first bite. I don’t remember the flavor but the texture was pure rubber. We put a bite in our mouths and chewed and chewed and chewed. That night, peanut butter filled our bellies and laughter filled our hearts.

When I was 9 years old, my grandma and Skipper (as my grandpa was known to one and all) were in Texas, helping Great-Aunt Genia take care of my great-grandma. Everyone in the family thought it would be great if I could spend my summer vacation with Grandma and Skipper. So I was shuffled onto an airplane and away I went for a true Texas adventure.

My first real meal in Texas was dinner at Aunt Genia’s. In Texas, dinner is the main meal, and it is served at noon. Texans eat breakfast, dinner and supper—only Yankees eat lunch. Aunt Genia’s table was open to everyone, and every shirt-tail relative within 50 miles brought food and came to set their eyes upon the little Yankee child from Portland, Oregon. There were at least 14 people at the table, of whom I knew two and had met one.

The table was so laden with food it groaned. There were hams and candied yams (and it wasn’t even Thanksgiving), potato salads, breads, homemade sweet cream butter (not oleo!), jams—more food than I’d ever seen on one table, and more colors than a lighted Christmas tree. And the smells—does anything smell better than hot bread right from the oven? Or ham baked with brown sugar? If I had to take three bites of everything, well, I’d be well fed by the time I left the table.

Grandma sat across the table to my right and Skipper sat to my immediate left. He passed me the food. Most of it I recognized as it was passed to me. I filled my plate with ham, green beans, a biscuit and potato salad, and then Skipper passed me a bowl of what looked to me like sand.

“Skipper,” I quietly asked, “what’s this?”

“Why, that’s fried okra!” he fairly bellowed.

“Oh. Okay.”

I wasn’t at all sure what okra was, and it sure looked like sand to me. (I later discovered a favored way of frying okra was to mash it up in the skillet with bacon fat and cornmeal until it was a gritty mess.) I put the requisite three bites worth on my plate and passed the bowl to the person on my right., Though I was willing to try it, I wasn’t willing to commit to a life-long relationship.

“Why,” said Skipper, “that’s not enough.” He reached across me, took the bowl from my neighbor’s hand, and put three big spoonfuls of the stuff on top of all the other food on my plate. It completely covered the ham, green beans, biscuit and everything else.

“This is larrupin’ good stuff. You’ll love it.” He passed the bowl, almost empty now, back to my neighbor.

I took a bite and nearly gagged. It was gritty, it was like sand in my mouth, and it was awful.

“Isn’t that good?” Skipper insisted. “Isn’t that larrupin’ good?”

My tears prepared for battle. It was the most horrid stuff I’d ever put in my mouth. Sand from the beach tasted better. Fried okra was worse than awful, but I choked down my three bites. My grandfather, whom I adored, kept poking me with his elbow and making a scene by saying, repeatedly and loudly, “Isn’t that good? Isn’t that larrupin’ good?”

What could I do? If I said yes, he’d be after me for not eating it. If I said no, Mother would find out and I’d get in trouble when I got home to Portland. And if I said no, it would embarrass both me and the person who made the dish. I looked to Grandma for help, but she was turned away talking to someone else.

What was I going to do? I was only 9, and I didn’t know how to handle these social situations, and I didn’t know these people. I tried to scrape the stuff off my edible food, but it stuck to everything. I wondered how people could actually eat and enjoy it.

Wham! Scrape! I looked up, and across the table stood Great-Aunt Genia. Her hands were flat on the table where she had just slapped them, and pure anger was on her face. Her chair was shoved back. She stomped around the table toward me. The fury radiated from her as she stopped behind me. I was going to die—this Yankee girl would never go home again. I thought to myself, “Oh, Lord, I’m too young to die—especially over a plate of sand.” The tears readied themselves to leap down my cheeks.

She grabbed my plate, stomped over to the garbage and scraped everything into the can. She threw away perfectly good food. Well, what was buried under the sand was perfectly good. Mostly. Perhaps she wasn’t going to kill me, but merely make me go without my lunch—I mean dinner.

She stomped back, slammed my plate in front of me and glowered at her brother, my beloved Skipper, and stated loud and clear, “This child doesn’t like okra. This child doesn’t have to eat okra. And this child is big enough to dish up her own plate and you will not do it again!”

She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and said in the friendliest of voices, “Honey, would y’all like a little more ham?”

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