Bread

"Does anyone know the words of the song, Bread and Gravy? I want my mom to play it on the guitar and sing it, but she doesn't remember the words," my niece wrote on Facebook.  Her mom, my sister who is 84, used to sing the song with our oldest sister when they were little girls. It was a depression era ditty that I remembered Daddy singing to entertain us kids.

Of course, I knew the words, or at least most of them, but I saw my brother had already answered her question.  I added my memory to his, and came up with what I remembered of the song:

"On Monday we had bread and gravy; on Tuesday we had gravy and bread; on Wednesday and Thursday we had gravy on toast, but that's only gravy and bread.

"On Friday, I talked to the landlord; said won't you please give us something instead?  On Saturday morning, by way of a change, we had gravy without any bread."

That's one of the reasons I love using Facebook.  A whole bunch of family can relive old  memories, share stories, laugh, cry or kid each other as if we were all there in person.

My early childhood didn't include toast, since that meant a trip to town for "light bread," as it was called then, but there were always Mama's biscuits.  They tasted wonderful with her creamy, milk gravy made with bacon drippings, or as peanut butter/apple butter filled biscuits we carried to our country school in our tin pails.

I must say I envied the lunches some of the other kids brought, store-bought white-bread sandwiches cut on the diagonal and filled with bologna.  Lying beside their bag lunch waiting to be eaten might be a school-bus-yellow banana.  (We usually got the kind covered with brown spots.)

One day in first grade (all the grades were in one room)  my beloved teacher came to my desk and said, "I love biscuits, but I never have time to make them. Would you trade me one of your biscuits for this?" as she offered me her lovely, white-bread sandwich.  Would I! I was a happy camper as I chowed down on the treat!

My husband has a story he  tells from a 3rd grade experience.  One day he asked his teacher if he could sing a song for the class.  He had brought an old banjo and when she agreed, he began to belt out, "How many biscuits did you eat this morning..." twanging frantically on the banjo strings, to continue, "How many biscuits can you eat tonight?" repeating the verse of what was really a Martha White Flour radio commercial performed by the likes of Lester Flatt with his banjo.  He said he didn't think the teacher would ever quit laughing.

Bread has always been essential to man. Everyone is familiar with the loaves and fishes story in the Bible when Jesus multiplied the food to feed the multitude.  In John 6:35, He says, "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."

Our parents provided bread for our nourishment growing up in this life. In verse 51 of John 6, Jesus says, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever: and the bread that I give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."  My godly mother would say, "Amen!"