French Toast… By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

October 5, 2011 Whitney Farmer 2 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an M.B.A, and is glad it has started to rain.

After work one night last weekend, a group of us went to an all-night diner at around 2 a.m…  We wanted to kill some time because the show had ended earlier than usual because the crowd was a bit older that night, and none of us wanted to be on the roads during peak drunk driving time. By around 3:30 or 4 a.m., there are few enough cars left on the road that you can avoid the stragglers who haven’t yet gone to jail or hospitals, or worse.  People who work in this field see so much that eventually everyone ends up sober and monogamous, even if they don’t believe in God.

I always order French toast. By the time my blood sugar crashes from the maple-like syrup, I’ll be driving into my garage and be ready for sleep.  The Formica and vinyl booth included genetic examples from the ends of the earth: Daniel, a textbook Hispanic American specimen; Berto the bar manager who becomes like Latin Velcro after ½ a beer, who refuses to acknowledge any blood but an indigenous tribe near Oaxaca; Bone, who reminds us often that he is the only purebred and is probably descended from Samoan royalty; Victor, who protests when we call him “Phoenician” because of his Lebanese background; and me, from a family which brags about being Apache and Chippewa, Flemish which I still need to research, royal Dutch, but for some reason seems ashamed to be from Vikings. I can say ‘Indian’ because I am one.

Berto continues to try and teach me Spanish and now calls me “Colorada” because of my hair. I continue to try and teach him French so that he can have even more ammunition against women.  But I have forgotten so much. I had studied it in college to prepare to work in Haiti. Now, it’s a vestigial skill that I use rarely at the club or to bust faux Gallic waiters at restaurants.  Once upon a time, I used to dream in French, and I used to feel like I was singing when I would get caught up in the rhythm of the intonation.

I was looking at some announcements at my church and saw that they are organizing a trip next year to work with gypsies in France. A few of the team members are named “TBD”. I used to have a gypsy family – I suppose called ‘travelers’ – who lived near me back in my former life. There were two little boys, Giovanni and Patchy, who were wild and sweet-natured. They would come by to pet my cocker spaniel named Enoch and pick flowers and pampas grass from my yard. One day, they found a can of spray-paint and, along with another neighbor boy named Shawn, emptied it all over my hydrangeas and on the side of my garage, saving enough for one blue stripe down Enoch’s flank.  He wasn’t hurt, and the majority of it scrubbed out mostly in one bath. But I used this opportunity for a teachable moment to hopefully turn the tiny hoodlums onto a higher path. I told them that I wanted them to have their parents call me to get permission to have them repaint over the patches of graffiti, and to trim off the parts in the garden which I honestly think that they were trying to improve in their childish eyes. I had to fight to speak sternly when I saw their shame. I just wanted to hold them.

Shawn’s dad called me and we made arrangements for the repair visit.  I never heard from Giovanni and Patchy’s family, but they showed up to fix what they had done. I think I gave them hot chocolate and peanut butter sandwiches and cookies, and we ended up having a companionable couple of hours. Giovanni and Patchy left the area with their family soon after that, and I never saw them again.

Those are the only gypsies I have ever met, and it seems impossible that anyone could despise such sweet little boys. But – like everywhere – poor people are first ostracized, then distrusted, and finally hated.  Perhaps it begins as economic competition, and then builds because of mutual offenses as families struggle to survive.

The miraculous luxury of French toast was created to keep stale bread from going to waste.  Like soup or gravy, the frugal wisdom behind its development is always in the back of my mind even when the meal is glorious.  In a world of limited resources and greater demands, being wasteful must be sinful.  And the time I spent to learn French will have been a waste unless it’s redeemed until or if I get to Haiti.  Skills can be prematurely marginalized like tonsils or an appendix or wisdom teeth. But like tonsils and their vital role in immune response, the discovery of an unexpected higher purpose can give a new perspective and therefore a new opportunity. Shout from the rooftops that the forsaken can be redeemed.

Goldmining for vestigial skills is a way out of economic or emotional depression for a country or an individual.  In the midst of the involuntary changes that confront us, looking at what we have with different eyes can create new opportunities or save our lives. Perhaps ‘french-toasting’ should be a new verb…I am again reminded of the Apollo 13 mission, when they had to figure out how to create new air after their equipment was damaged in the collision with space debris, otherwise the astronauts would suffocate in space. They looked at what they had with new eyes – including a plastic cover of an instruction manual and some odd shaped piping – and they saved their own lives and wrote a different end to a story that would have been a tragedy.

I met a family from Provence recently, and over three days of meals and laughter, honest affection grew. Marie had tears in her eyes as we said goodbye, and she asked me to be very specific on exactly how soon I could come and visit them.  I was planning on hitting the books to recall how to conjugate with être and avoir before visiting for a week or so next year for immersion with laughter, a loaf of bread, and a jug of wine.  Now, perhaps I will have the end of my trip extended to spend time with gypsies to show them that God loves them, and maybe see the wild dark eyes of Giovanni and Patchy in the crowd.

Quote of the Blog, from Steven Wright: “I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast anytime’. So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance.”