By Dave Layton
The prayer above is the earliest one that I’ve found so far from the dozens of Charlie’s prayer journals that I inherited. In 1996 Charlie was a new pastor at New Hartford Methodist Church. The terms he used to describe the food in his prayer point to the central role food played in his life. His corporal existence centered on “savoring each food delight.” Likewise he ends the prayer with, “ — to the glory of God who created food and allows us to delight in it.”
Charlie never said grace when we ate together. As a pastor, family meals were the only chance for him to share in the thanksgiving prayers of others. After reading this short grace from him, I now realize those shared prayers were some of the most important ones to him.
Charlie wasn’t yet obese at age 37. He was still active with the New Hartford Volunteer Fire Dept. as well as serving as an Iowa Highway Patrol Chaplain, but his exercising was already becoming less consistent. The more important consuming calories was to him the less important burning them off seemed to be. Already his mantra after consuming a huge meal was, “Well that ought to last me until we get to the ice-cream store anyway.” Yes he said it in jest – except that we would indeed end up at the ice cream store if he had anything to say about it.
As important as getting full was to him, food meant so much more. It was a connection to humanity for him. Most of his socialization was either at a restaurant or celebrating with family and friends at holidays. He collected over a thousand cookbooks mainly to browse through them and imagine families and friends celebrating with the fancy recipes. Diverse cookbooks with glowing descriptions of recipes proved to him that delight in sustenance was truly a commonality he shared with all mankind. Food preparation was like a sacrament to him. He owned every kind of cookware imaginable, often in multiple sets, and he kept his knives honed to a razor sharpness. God forbid that any pieces of food he prepared would be smashed or cut raggedly. One of his greatest pride and joys was our Grandmother Nana’s vintage Sunbeam toaster which slowly lowered the bread and slowly raised perfect toast. “These new toasters like yours just burn the outside of the bread and don’t really toast it.” “Okay Bro.” Nana’s toaster is now carefully packed away waiting to be a wedding present for the next one of her descendants to get married.
Thanksgiving was Charlie’s favorite holiday. A few years after he penned this prayer (1999), our sister, Nancy was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. She loves Thanksgiving too. That Thanksgiving we flew out to California and met Dad at Nancy’s house for Thanksgiving. On that day food did connect our family with love and comfort. At the time, we didn’t know how many more visits with Nancy we’d have. I like to think that meal was part of a healing process that led to fun visits with Nancy, even twenty-five years later. Thank God! It was the most important Thanksgiving, but I don’t remember the food however good it was. If Charlie were here, I’m sure he could recite the whole menu and even say how the turkey was cooked.
Not long after Sally and I started seeing each other in the early 2000s Charlie was the pastor at Greenfield Methodist. Greenfield was a great time for him. His parishioners and friends the Olesens got him involved in the renovation of an old community theatre which he loved. One year Sally and I spent the Easter holiday with Charlie, and the Olesens invited us to join Charlie at their house for Easter dinner. It was the most sumptuous elaborately served meal I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t remember any of it, but fortunately Sally did. When Sally was writing thankyous for memorial gifts, she came across one from Catherine Olesen. Sally mentioned in her thankyou card to Catherine how wonderful her sweet potato pie at that Easter dinner was. It wasn’t long before a card from Catherine came back to us with the sweet potato pie recipe. Food really does connect people.
Several years later Charlie had been moved to Forest City. It was a larger church but a more isolated living circumstance. He combated that isolation by preparing a huge Thanksgiving feast and inviting some parishioners who were struggling. He prepared for the meal starting with a six-page spreadsheet of the different dishes and a timeline for completing each. Sally and I came a couple days early to help him get the meal ready. When we saw the spreadsheet taking up a good five feet of wall space we howled with laughter. He’d prepared for every contingency except one – us. As I said earlier, his cutlery had to be finely honed and razor sharp as we were about to learn the hard way. An unseen knife blade was grabbed slicing the dickens out of a finger. Indeed, we were suddenly playing out the Saturday Night live skit parodying Julia Child saying, “I’ve sliced the dickens out of my finger!” while bleeding profusely all over all the food she was preparing. Why did that seem so funny on TV? Anyway, the finger got bandaged. The mess got cleaned up and the food got served – though maybe with a little extra protein. It was a great meal, though I really don’t remember anything else about it, except that, like always, I provided a wild mushroom dish.
In another year or two Charlie got moved to Dubuque. From then on, we always had Thanksgiving together taking turns hosting. Grace was always a shared song we all sang. Sometimes there were other family and/or guests and sometimes just the three of us, but three things were always certain. There were no more spreadsheets, his knives were put away before we arrived and at the end of the main course my contented brother would say, “Well that should last me until dessert anyway. When should we have it?”
