From the first whiff, the cafeteria's "homemade" soup wafted us back to prior bowls of soup, slowly sipped and savored in the "tight money" days of 1967. As newly married college students and constantly cash-constrained, vegetable soup at the University of Arkansas student union constituted the consummate power lunch.
Grocery lists from that era derived from simple meals, individually and specifically planned to dovetail with a virtually non-existent budget.
Basic fare satisfied basic lives. Tiny cans of Spanish rice, corn and green beans. Two pieces of chicken, two pork chops and two hamburger patties. Chicken pot pies at a quarter apiece. One can of bean and bacon soup, one of cream of mushroom soup, and saltines for snacks. And don't forget: two pineapple slices to lounge luxuriously on tiny beds of lettuce leaves. Always Doritos chips, Ritz crackers and Oreo cookies.
Liquid fare included cases of cheapo Cragmont Cola from Safeway and gallon-sized boxes (fitted with a nifty little spigot) of whole milk from the University farm. Occasionally there'd be treats, a boughten sandwich or ice cream, but never a movie.
The specter of money shook its ubiquitous, shaggy head each week as Mary eyed tasty red onions. Nevertheless, the cheaper (more budget-friendly) white onion always trumped his red brother. Only years of marriage, emboldened by real jobs that gradually fattened coffers, allowed the red fellas to grind down her resistance and sneak into her cart.
That first year of grocery shopping challenged us financially with a whopping weekly bill of ten dollars. We plateaued there–until one memorable trip home when my mother confronted Mary about my "dangerously thin" appearance. Mother's advice to her new daughter-in-law bode ominous and scary: spend more money. Mary wisely bumped up cash outflow by three dollars a week, soon swelled my weight by five pounds to125, forever vanquishing thinness. Oh, for those "dangerously thin" days to return!
Spiced tea eased many a clear-eyed, ambitious evening into groggy morning as Mary and Louise Owens (now Louise Finney) poured over Shakespeare. And resolution of life's mysteries required only repeated invocations of verbal nuggets from Dr. Claude Faulkner and Dr. Leo Van Scyoc, household bywords of ponderous scholarly authority.
Fierce adversities invariably succumbed to sheer determination. Getting to class through driving rain, for example, demanded only a half-mile trek up (and up and up) South Duncan past the old Theta Tau house on Dixon and onto campus.
But we understood not that three webs already in the spinning would soon begin to entangle us. The Bible soberly warns of this trio's insidious and subtle ability to choke and stifle our best.
As David the shepherd boy dispatched the giant Goliath, this terrible threesome–the worries of the world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things–today fall to the memory of a lifestyle where vegetable soup comprised a treasured treat.
Freedom is neither in possessions nor in their lack, but in the attitude that what God has provided as necessary is also sufficient.
Copyright 2003 James McAlister
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