Gone are the days when most families gathered around the table in the early morning hours to start the day with a good breakfast. Of course, that meant someone, usually the woman of the house, would rise an hour earlier and make biscuits and fry something. That something could range from country ham, bacon (side meat) or pork chops to country sausage and the like.
That breakfast table often served as a platform for everyone in the family to get their day’s marching orders.
The word “breakfast,” composed of two words, “break” and “fast,” in its origin meant to break the “fast” of the last evening. Today it seems we have re-interpreted the word “breakfast” to mean to get a “fast break” on the day. Most breakfasts today are purchased fast and eaten fast.
My friend and former supervisor, the late Claude Harris, told of the days when he and his brother as boys milked 15 cows by hand every morning before breakfast. Now that would give you an appetite for breakfast. I would not have wanted to get into a handshaking contest with those Harris boys. I’ll bet they had a handgrip that would bring you to your knees.
“Mama fried pork tenderloin, pork chops, fried chicken, even steak sometimes for breakfast,” Mr. Harris related. “We could eat three or four eggs and half-a-dozen biscuits apiece just to get started. You milk seven or eight cows before breakfast and you are ready to eat,” he mused.
Ruth Bradford, first cousin to my mother, married Ralph Holbrook. For many years, Ralph Holbrook owned a large general merchandise store in downtown New Middleton, Tennessee. He also ran a small dairy operation.
I have put my feet under Pappy Holbrook’s table on many occasions. In doing so, I learned that he had a few hard and fast rules. One of his rules was that each of his four sons, Wayland, Jack, Joe, and Jerry went to the milk barn every morning before breakfast and did something constructive. Every boy had a job at the milk barn every morning.
Another rule involved inspections at the breakfast table. Before the meal began every boy had to show that his hands and finger nails were clean. And each boy’s hair had to be combed neatly. If anything was out of order, it was back to the bathroom to get it right.
A lot can be learned at the breakfast table.
In the house where I grew up, my father ate breakfast promptly at 6:30. He never varied the time over five minutes. He liked his eggs scrambled and he was oft heard to say, “Somebody pass me the manneez” (mayonnaise.) Salad dressing or mayonnaise, it didn’t matter, he was going to have some with his eggs.
When my brothers, my sister, and I were growing up we ate a ton of rice and oatmeal for breakfast. I was half grown before I found out that everybody didn’t eat rice for breakfast. It’s hard to beat a big steaming bowl of rice topped with real butter and plenty of sugar.
Now that’ll stick to your ribs! I was also half grown when I came to appreciate my mother’s thriftiness. She was feeding us breakfast for pennies a day.
But breakfast has changed dramatically in America. Seems no one has time to sit down anymore. We are all in a big rush. It should come as no surprise that McDonalds Corporation is the largest egg buyer in the USA. And other breakfast fast food outlets
abound. We order breakfast over a microphone, exchange our money for something in a sack, and woof it down on our way to where we’re headed. Frankly, I can’t get used to a round fried egg and round bacon. I guess that’s what it takes to fit an English muffin, or bun, or biscuit.
Breakfast has long been recognized as “the most important meal of the day.” That alone should give us cause to carefully reconsider our eating habits.
Copyright 2017 by Jack McCall
