NASCAR and Green Apples

Image by skeeze from Pixabay 

Michael Jordan just announced he is going to have a  NASCAR car and will have Bubba Wallace as the driver. It costs a truckload of money to start a team with all the things that go with it, but Michael doesn't have to think twice. He is worth about 2 billion(that's b) and is the richest former pro athlete on the planet. Of course he got a great salary when he was playing basketball, but he has proved to be a marvelous businessman who asks questions, listens to people, and puts his money to work for him. That's a big difference in many former athletes who declare bankruptcy within 3 years of leaving the sport that was theirs. He took what he had and made something of it.

I 

Put that with this experience. My neighbor and fellow Wilson teacher, Patty Hamilton, had a big apple tree in her back yard that she didn't like. It had kind of small green apples for its crop every year, and if she didn't get out in a hurry and get them picked, they would fall on the ground and make a mess. Or the birds would peck holes in them and ruin them. She offered them to all the neighbors, and we tried to help out by cooking everything with a green apple that we could. Finally one year she was left with two huge sacks of them, and I said, "Why don't we take them to school? Maybe the Wilson teachers will take some." Anything was a good idea at that point, so we carried them to the teachers' lounge. But the teachers were not ready to take the little green apples home, so the bags were there in the fridge taking up space. One afternoon a junior class with me was trudging through The Scarlet Letter, trying to hope there could be a happy ending for Hester and dopey little Pearl. We had finished the discussion, and they were reading on their own. And I thought, maybe a cold apple, even a small one, would be helpful. "Anybody want an apple to eat while you read?" I was met with all hands raised, so I went across the hall and got enough for everyone. And from that afternoon on, I didn't even have to ask but would just get the apples when we got to the quiet time of the class. All I heard were pages turning and mouths chomping. I don't think I ever saw in an education journal that an apple in the afternoon was a great reading stimulus, but it certainly was welcomed at Wilson. We eventually finished off those sacks and were sad that the little green guys were gone. 

Things that we have sometimes are old made new again. In the 1960's you could hardly go in a kitchen that someone didn't have a sour dough starter either working or already in good shape. Of course it put inches on our hips, but that bread was so good. We were copying the women of early Texas who brought sour dough starter with them in crocks in the covered wagons. If somehow on the trip, it got ruined or lost, they would ask every other woman traveling if she could spare a pinch to get a new batch started. It was often given as a wedding present. It was always given as a house warming gift when a new cabin was constructed. The cooks would usually make it from water that potatoes had been boiled in and once it was going good and slightly sour smelling, it would go in a crock. Being able to use what they saw growing, some pioneer women would use wild plums. They would gather the plums, throw in about a half cup of water and one cup flour, and allow it to set in a bowl for 24 hours. More flour and water came the second day. On the third day the starter would probably be making some bubbles, and the plums could be taken out.

We are in a throw-away world, it seems, where people disregard something because it isn't what we think is a necessity. But lessons and experiences always remind us that what we have is valuable somehow or some way.