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PITTSBURG —
Where we come from has a big effect on who we are now. At least that is my way of thinking. You might think differently than I do on that, but it might be because you came from someplace else.
Back in the day, there was a store in Fittstown, Okla., called McElroy’s. I couldn’t put it into language this way at the time, but this store was to become for me the standard against which all other stores would ever be measured. You parked out front and walked in off the gravel to a concrete porch. Just inside the front door there was a pop machine on the left and the check-out was on the right.
Now when I say pop-machine, you might not be getting the right picture. The pop machine was a refrigerator laid-out horizontal like a chest. Inside it was some of the coldest pop ever. Grapettes were my personal favorite. Coke was the generic term for carbonated soft drink so there were often exchanges at the time like:
“I’d like a Coke.”
“What kind of Coke?”
“Grape.”
One of the great features of McElroy’s--other than the magical pop machine--was the fact that they sold meat. Glen McElroy, who along with his wife Lou owned and ran the store, was a butcher. He was a man ahead of his time in his awareness of the dangers of food additives and would often assure us that he didn’t use the same dyes in his meat that they did in the big chains up in Ada.
In those days my favorite lunch meat was baloney. (Yes, I know it is Bologna. I’ve come just about has far as I can.) Glen had huge tubes of the stuff that he would slice off for us. When you got home, all you had to do was pull off the little circle of plastic before you ate it. Nothing--and I mean nothing--ever tasted so good when Daddy cut it from the center to the circumference and fried it until it had a little black spot on each side.
I wonder how many tubes of baloney Glen went through, one slice at a time.
And you have to think about it one slice at a time because no one could eat that whole baloney tube all at once.
Looking at it a certain way, I approach most things now like slicing baloney.
Where we come from has a big effect on who we are now. At least that is my way of thinking. You might think differently than I do on that, but it might be because you came from someplace else.
Back in the day, there was a store in Fittstown, Okla., called McElroy’s. I couldn’t put it into language this way at the time, but this store was to become for me the standard against which all other stores would ever be measured. You parked out front and walked in off the gravel to a concrete porch. Just inside the front door there was a pop machine on the left and the check-out was on the right.
Now when I say pop-machine, you might not be getting the right picture. The pop machine was a refrigerator laid-out horizontal like a chest. Inside it was some of the coldest pop ever. Grapettes were my personal favorite. Coke was the generic term for carbonated soft drink so there were often exchanges at the time like:
“I’d like a Coke.”
“What kind of Coke?”
“Grape.”
One of the great features of McElroy’s--other than the magical pop machine--was the fact that they sold meat. Glen McElroy, who along with his wife Lou owned and ran the store, was a butcher. He was a man ahead of his time in his awareness of the dangers of food additives and would often assure us that he didn’t use the same dyes in his meat that they did in the big chains up in Ada.
In those days my favorite lunch meat was baloney. (Yes, I know it is Bologna. I’ve come just about has far as I can.) Glen had huge tubes of the stuff that he would slice off for us. When you got home, all you had to do was pull off the little circle of plastic before you ate it. Nothing--and I mean nothing--ever tasted so good when Daddy cut it from the center to the circumference and fried it until it had a little black spot on each side.
I wonder how many tubes of baloney Glen went through, one slice at a time.
And you have to think about it one slice at a time because no one could eat that whole baloney tube all at once.
Looking at it a certain way, I approach most things now like slicing baloney.
When I teach my classes, I organize the material in pieces that we tackle on a lecture by lecture basis. Most of what I teach, the students could understand on their own if they just did it themselves.
Some of them do. Most require someone to slice it up for them and then to offer “encouragement” to eat the slices. Afterward, they need someone to check how well they absorbed it, but it’s best not to push analogies too far.
In addition to teaching, I spend a big chunk of my time helping students deal with our system. They have problems and come for help. I will confess that in many cases I can solve the problem with two minutes at the computer and thirty seconds on the phone; when I think this is best, I do. Most of the time, I give them a list of what they need to do and then send them out do it. It will sometimes take them a half-a-day to do what I could’ve done for them in two-and-a-half minutes.
But getting it done quickly isn’t the point. If they are going to be adults, they are going to have learn to deal with people themselves. They are going to have to learn to do the leg-work.
Here, I guess you could say that I am slicing the baloney and giving it to them. They either eat it or don’t. Learning to do that is a big part of transitioning to an independent human being. Eventually, if they keep at it, they might slice it up for themselves. That’s what we hope for, at least.
Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University.
