A POEM FOR EPIPHANY, AND THE WAY TO A WOMAN’S HEART [R, 1-6-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

THE FIRST TRAVEL WRITER

I just went along for the ride

hoping to get a column

for “Back East Times”

They promised me

a rubber cigar

What a bust that was

It was loaded

It exploded

But we got to see the baby

I like babies

And Mary washed out

the myrrh bowl

so I could take it home

the way my wife said

I’m not even going

to write about the trip, though

Nobody would be interested

Not enough for a whole column

 

THE WAY TO A WOMAN’S HEART

 

I love the story of the scrawny little guy who applied at the lumber camp to be a lumberjack. “You’re too little to be a lumberjack,” the boss said. “I’ll show you,” the little guy said. He grabbed an axe and in twenty minutes he had cleared an acre of tall trees. “Where in the world did you learn to do that?” the boss said. “In the Sahara Forest.” “But the Sahara is a desert.” “Yeah, it is now.”

There are many ways, especially for a preacher, to “apply” that story, but mostly it makes me think of the years we lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where we were in lumbering territory, and knew a lumberjack. A scrawny little guy. Well, he was actually a cook at a lumber camp.

 

“It was mostly a mistake,” he said. “I went to the camp to apply to be a lumberjack. I’m not very big, but I’m strong, and I needed a job. The foreman said, “Our cook just quit. Can you cook?” I said, “No.” He said, “Good. These guys will eat anything. Here’s your apron.”

 

“I figured it would be easier than felling trees. Boy, was I wrong. I had to be up in the morning before anyone else to bake dozens and dozens of biscuits and fry dozens and dozens of eggs. I had to stir up huge cauldrons of stew for supper. Then I was washing up everything when everyone else had gone to bed. But it worked out great. I got me a good woman because I knew how to cook.”

I knew his wife. She was very skinny, so apparently she was not the type to eat dozens of biscuits, but she didn’t like to cook, so this kind of husband was perfect.

It has always been said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Women are catching up…

John Robert McFarland