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Books About Life on a Farm Written Especially for People Who Like to Read! "Highly recommended reading." The Midwest Book Review Reviews & Readers' Comments |
LeAnn R. Ralph Rural Route 2 Author E6689 970th Ave. Colfax, WI 54730 (715) 308-6336 |
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by LeAnn R. Ralph When I was growing up on the farm, we ate three meals a day: breakfast, dinner and supper. Then I moved away from my hometown and started traveling. I realized, then, other people didn't eat breakfast, dinner and supper - they ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. "There's something missing here," I thought. "What happened to the evening meal? Supper?" I found out people in other parts of the country called the evening meal dinner. I had a hard time reconciling myself to calling the mid-day meal lunch, though. It wasn't lunch - it was dinner. Lunch was the meal you ate in between breakfast and dinner. Or in between dinner and supper. Or after supper if someone came to visit in the evening. Or after certain church services, such as Lenten services on Wednesday evenings, or another event like a funeral, or maybe even a wedding. Lunch was NOT a meal you ate in the middle of the day. When I was a kid, lunch was a special event during haying time. Sometimes the neighbors used to help my dad put up his hay. We'd have a whole crew around for the afternoon. Big, well-muscled neighborhood men coming in from the field during the middle of the afternoon - crowding around a table graced by Mother's best dishes and silverware. One of her hand-embroidered tablecloths providing an air of elegance that contrasted sharply with the appearance of the haying crew... Men grimy with dust and hay chaff. Large work-roughened hands. Black grease permanently packed under their fingernails. Grasping the handles of dainty cups between their thumbs and forefingers. Munching tasty tidbits like sandwiches, cookies, cake, perhaps some homemade dill pickles... This is how I pictured lunch. And now I had people telling me dinner was supposed to be called lunch. If my father had eaten the noon meal some folks in other parts of the country consider normal, like a small salad with a few crackers, he never would have made it through a long afternoon of hard physical labor. He would have run out of fuel by 2 o'clock. No, he needed a nice substantial dinner of meat, potatoes, bread and a piece of pie. Lunch just wouldn't do it for him. Eventually, I must admit, I did conform to calling the mid-day meal lunch. Now I find I have moved back to a place where many people still call the noon meal dinner and the evening meal supper. So - I've compromised with breakfast, lunch and supper. Which works, until I attend a church event and someone mentions lunch. Then I start entertaining visions of tasty tidbits like sandwiches, cake, cookies - and if I'm lucky, maybe even some homemade dill pickles... ****************** LeAnn R. Ralph is the author of the farm books "Christmas in Dairyland (True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm)" (trade paperback; 2003), "Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam" (trade paperback; 2004), and "Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for Interviewing Family Members and Writing Oral Histories" (e-book; 2004) |
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