Set for Dinner

Hello, this is Amorella. Welcome to dinner. I have only food for thought of course, but it is better than nothing. Yesterday, on the way home from Westerville Richard and Carol passed an older man looking for money for food at the end of the off ramp into town.

We were over a lane to turn left to eat supper at Outback before heading home. It was pouring down rain and while sometimes Carol gives money she didn’t have a chance as the light changed. I thought about the man’s smile. He waved people on with the green light not wanting to obstruct traffic. When we left after a very satisfying meal he was gone from the area. I hope he got some money to eat, but his clothes were soaked. I still feel badly now that you bring it up. Outback is pretty fancy for us in terms of cost, we are more Cracker Barrel oriented when it comes to supper, thus the juxtaposition of the situation was more strained.

My thoughts flew to Route 66, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and Woody Guthrie. Interesting, I had not thought of these thoughts as spiritual, but they are.  I best let it go at that as I feel a lecture coming on. Besides, it’s all been said before, for thousands of years. It’s still a dog eat dog world out there as far as human beings are concerned.

You needed to know your thoughts are spiritual relating to all those five common subjects, particularly Woody Guthrie. People are many times more spiritual than they realize and as always, you are no exception.

Sometimes I feel like an exception but not exceptional. Sometimes I have a distance between myself and my humanity. I am not sure why.

Survival comes first, orndorff. You can be as a dog when you have to be. You would rather bite with a word than with a fist. You have used both in your life.

I remember being angry and egotistical and tough in my college days, but where I remember using my fist the hardest was against the south cement block wall of the North Heidelberg dive on High Street across from the Ohio State main campus. My knuckles ache from it still, only now with arthritis. Who was I trying to impress?

A couple of co-eds. You and your cousin told a story of playing football for the New England Patriots. A quick swallow of a pitcher of 3.2 draft beer will sometimes do that to a person. You paid for it then and you are still paying for it. That was not a spiritual event. You and your cousin were not setting up for dinner.