When my grandfather returned from that event that he participated and that he never wanted to talk about (World War I), he returned to North Dakota to continue working in the lumberyards.
He was good at what he did so he was sent to South Dakota to help start another yard. It was here that he met my grandmother and in 1923, 1924 and 1925, my aunt, my mom and my uncle were born. They spent the entirety of their youths, and the entirety of the Great Depression in the great plains, on the prairie of South Dakota.
My mom lived to be 99. She left us here on earth just two years ago. A couple years before that was the last Christmas she was able to travel here to Bootjack to be with all of us.
I’ll never forget when she saw me sneaking some saltine crackers to tide me over until dinner. She was really smiling. She said we used to eat those. A lot of them. Everyone ate them.
But we had it better than most. We had a cow, so we had butter on ours. Then she held up her amazing 97-year-old index finger that used to do chores on the farm and reiterated with a smug and satisfied look that … we had it better than most.
Nowadays, you head over to the Pioneer Market (God bless those folks, huh) or if they don’t have everything you need, maybe you gotta head to Fresburg and hit the Tarjay or go throw a few elbows down at the Wallyworld.
But I always have like a whoa-ment whenever I first arrive at places like this. I find myself looking at all this stuff. Lots of stuff. Nice stuff. Tons of stuff. And I can’t help thinking to myself that as a nation, as a country, as a society, as a people in our communities and in our churches, that we have it better than most.
And then I have another whoa-ment. I ask myself how is it that there are so many people struggling to get food in all these places in the world and we are sitting here with all this stuff? Isn’t there a way to like spread this stuff around? Isn’t it our duty?
Proverbs 21:13 says that whoever hears the cries of the poor and covers his ears, will also cry himself and not be heard. 1John 3:17 says that whoever holds onto the goods of this world, and sees a friend in need and shuts up his heart to them, then how does the love of God abide in him?
My mom and dad used to hammer me with this stuff. My older brothers would scarf their food down and get dismissed from the table and be off burning calories while 30 pound Tommy (me) struggled with his last few bites. I was told by my dad that somewhere in the world there was a starving waif, three of them in fact, that would give anything to have and split three ways what I didn’t want to finish.
One time it was just my mom there and she didn’t have time to play games. She told me — we prayed for it, and you prayed over it, now eat it. My mom was kind and sweet, beautiful and petite. But that prairie gig definitely left her with a bit of a gladiator streak. You should have seen me scarf that food down under her watchful glare.
But still that nagging question. What’s a guy like me to do about this stuff? Most of my life I wasn’t exactly a church dude. Quite hedonistic, actually.
You know that philosophy that says that your own personal pleasure should come first and foremost before anything else. Wow. Sick. How can you be a part of any family when you think like that?
And yet even during these times, I couldn’t shake those images of the starving waifs. So you might think to yourself, man I feel kind of helpless. So, where do I go? What do I do? How do I do it and when?
Now that I am walking a slightly straighter path in life, I have run across many places, faith based or not, that are the actual answers to all of these questions. Here in Mariposa, we are blessed with the blessing of our local Manna House. There is church right here in Bootjack whose pastor and his wife just missioned in Nepal.
And there is always Catholic Charities whose giving also reaches across the globe. And you never know. The way this stuff was bugging me all my life, you might find like I did that the way you give might be your way to “The Way.”
Like they used to say at my mom’s church, when God gives something to you, you should give it to others. Besides, there is that starving waif out there.
Give so that for maybe even for one brief and beautiful moment that waif might have it … wait for it … better than most.
Tom Laird is a resident of Bootjack Heights.
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