Dennis McGuire- December 22, 2012- “The Best Things the Lord Ever Created”
Dennis McGuire
#1125256
Telford Unit
3899 State Highway 98
New Boston, Texas 75570
December 22, 2012
For some reason, earlier this year I began telling a friend of mine in here, Gomez, that I was making a list of the five best things that I believe the Lord ever created. Everyone who knows me knows I love cats, and those who sit with me at the table at breakfast know I love grits, too. And pancakes. So, just to be silly, and because I love making lists, I made up a list of “The Top 5 (later expanded to 10) Best Things the Lord Ever Created.” Here they are, in order, with explanations to follow:
Grits. Rice. Pancakes. Cats. Eggs. I was born and raised in Louisiana, and thank God I had a Mother and a Grandmother that knew how to cook and serve food properly.
When God created grits thousands and thousands of years ago (the ancient Hebrews ate them in the Sinai desert) He intended for grits to be eaten with butter and salt. Not sugar. Grits is a corn product, from the same family as corn-on-the-cob, hominy, and popcorn. We put salt on these items. Lots of it. Not sugar. The Lord intended for all foods of the corn family to be eaten with salt and butter. I have no doubt that that’s how He enjoys His grits. Now, in prison, we only get yellow grits. In the grocery store, you can buy yellow grits or white grits. I have never purchased yellow grits in my life. I never ate yellow grits until I came to prison. At home, I often cooked up an entire huge bowl of grits and ate it as my entire meal, with lots and lots of butter and lots and lots of salt. It’s cheap and easy to make. And utterly delicious.
No. 2, rice, is another food product that is cheap and easy to cook and goes with lots of things. I was raised on rice-and-gravy. Brown gravy or cream gravy. It’s an all-purpose side dish. Later in life, I discovered a chinese dish called fried rice. I love chicken fried rice, beef fried rice, shrimp fried rice, whatever, but my favorite is combination fried rice. Uncle Ben’s makes a broccoli-and-cheese rice product that is delicious and goes great alongside two big ole fried pork chops.
No. 3 is pancakes. This is how this silly list got started. Even after more than 10 years of eating pancakes at least 4 days (nights) out of 7, I still love pancakes. But I told Gomez that the Lord intended for pancakes to be eaten with lots of butter and syrup. Here on this unit, we rarely get butter. Oh, they have it back there in the kitchen. They’re just too chickenshit to serve it to us most times. That is, of course, in direct violation of the Lord’s intentions when He created pancakes thousands and thousands of years ago for the ancient Hebrews to eat (along with their grits) in the Sinai desert. Now, some want to argue with me that the Lord didn’t create pancakes, man did, but can’t I give Him some credit?
Number 4: Now the greatest living creature that the Lord ever created is the cat. The house cat, the tomcat, the tabby. I tell ya, that guy really knew what He was doing when He created cats. (of course, the Lord is probably not used to being refered to as “that guy” but I’m convinced He gets a kick out of my sense of humor). I had dogs when I was a boy. A beautiful dachshund when I was a baby until he died when I was 10. Then, a genuine old-fashioned mutt from when I was 12 until I was about 24 or so. We were a “dog” family. The girl I married, Carol, was from a “cat” family. They had a huge old Maine coon cat that lived many, many years. Carol and I tried living with two kittens shortly after we got married, but that didn’t go so well in that small apartment of ours, and we gave them to her parents. Years later, one warm autumn afternoon while I was working in a flower bed in our front yard of the cozy little condominium we had in Jackson, Wyoming, this beautiful, full-grown black cat wandered into the yard and walked right on in past the front door, which I had left open, as if he owned the place. Naturally, he went straight to the kitchen. Not having any cat food, I found a can of tuna and offered it to him, and one meal led to another and that cat came to live with us and was my big baby and my pride and joy for the next 13 years. He passed away in 1996 and I miss him to this day. I was blessed with two other great cats during the eight years I was with David, and maybe I’ll write about them in a future journal entry. Anyway, cats are just great. They serve absolutely no useful purpose except to bring joy, happiness, and love into the lives of ordinary human beings. God created them specifically for that purpose, I’m convinced.
Number 5 is the incredible edible egg. You can do so many things with eggs. They can be boiled, or left un-boiled, cracked open and fried, scrambled or poached. You can make omelets with ’em. No matter how you prepare them, eggs should be eaten with salt, and pepper, if you have it. (Pepper does not go on grits, by the way. Or on pancakes. or cats. Eggs, yes.) Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Easy one. Think it through: chickens and hens and roosters were created first, so that the first egg could be fertilized and laid. God knew what He was doin’. These so-called mysteries of life ain’t hard to figure out if you just think about ’em. (Eggs are also fun to throw at people and at cars, too, but if you do this, they should not be boiled first).
Anyway, after these first five items, I realized I had five more wonderful creations that needed to be added to the list, so here they are, in order: #6: cows. #7: salt. #8: pigs. #9: sugar. #10: coffee beans.
….