Takes A Licking and Keeps on Baking

Norman Rockwell helped capture and perhaps made iconic the place that food plays in the nostalgia of Americana.   This Independence Day in 2010 in particular finds me looking to a bit of comfort in things Americana like Norman Rockwell, visions of apple pie, kids running through the fountain of a city fire hydrant, or memories of me and my childhood dog wading through the ponds and creeks in the mountains back home.

Food itself always seems to be a source of comfort.   A common denominator we can all seem to agree on and come together over.   In times like these I found great comfort in the dinner party we had last night.   Good friends, Southern food, good stories, and lots of laughs.   Rockwell captured food as an American thread in this diverse patchwork quilt we call the United States.   Several Iconic Rockwell paintings come to mind:  the young boy and the cop at the lunch counter, the grandmother and grandfather serving Thanksgiving turkey, or the young boy bowing his head in grace with his grandparents over the dinner table.   Yes, maybe it seems like drippy sticky sweet images; but I cannot help to be comforted by these images.

The pictures bring back my own memories like me standing on chair in my granny's kitchen as she made cake letting me steal licks of the batter.  

I think it is these memories and nostalgic notions that are in fact our country's strongest bond.   If we lose our ability to look upon these images and memories and find comfort then I think the terrorist win.   As we move forward as a country we have to bring all the history with us.   How do we learn if we do not take a look at history and see our failures as well as our victories.   No nation exists without the good and the bad.   All nations, free or otherwise, have all had less than glorious moments; yet I dare say all nations also have traditions that bind even the most diverse factions together.  

The fourth of July means many things to many people in America.   Fireworks, flags proudly displayed, watermelon and picnics, remembering the brave that fell in war and saluting the brave that march forward.  In every fourth of July celebration today around the country I doubt there will be one event in which food is not the center of function.   We are a country that likes to believe that we keep on keeping on no matter what and  I believe we can and will.   For me I will hold the memory of my granny in her tiny kitchen sweltering in the humid Mountain summer stirring up her homemade short cake as the roar of a fan desperately turned to give a bit of relief and the smell of red ripe strawberries filled the air.