The Burgerless Burger

 I love to grill hamburgers and hotdogs over a hickory fire and enjoying getting together to share the food and fun.  As everyone built their hamburger to their liking, the subject of my famous hamburger arose.  I once told that when I was young, we could not afford hamburger meat so I would make a hamburger without the meat.  Friends would laugh at me and say that I was crazy.  I told them not to knock until they tried it.

When we moved back to Alabama from Illinois in 1960, Dad could not find work.  There were many times when we had little or no food in the house.  There had been a short time when we first moved to Illinois, that we had little or no food, but dad quickly got work there and we had plenty.

One of my favorite sandwiches is bread with butter baked in the oven and then sprinkled with sugar.  I remember momma with tears in her eyes saying to my sister and me that there was no food, but how good the sugar-coated buttered toast was.  When food was in short supply, mamma would always say she was not hungry give us her food.  She did that night with the buttered toast.

Back in Alabama, there were several times that there was no food.  Momma would always remind us that God would take care of us.  I remember one morning that the cupboard was bare.  We heard a vehicle in the yard and my sister, two brothers, and I went to see who it was.  It was an old 1950 baby blue Plymouth Deluxe, my Grandpaw Chapman’s car.  By the way, it is the same car that my daughter Angela had the fire department retrieve from our burning basement and I had restored.

Grandpaw had bags of groceries for us.  That morning we had milk and cereal for breakfast and other delights.  God used Grandpaw that morning.  A time or two later, my aunt would bring us food.

Daddy always felt bad that other people had to provide what he could not.  Grandpaw just encouraged him to keep looking for work which daddy finally did.  We soon bought a tractor and traded for some pigs.  After that, we had plenty of food.

At the family discussion, we told our guests, that one time one of the family took time and skill to create her hamburger.  This person had all the fixin’s a person could put on a hamburger.  This person had this knack for making food look delicious when they eat.  They use the expression “lambing good.”  All I know is that means it is delicious, I think.

This family member was about half way through eating the hamburger when they realized that they had failed to put her hamburger patty in the sandwich.  I told them, “See it is pretty good without the meat!”

When one does not have an abundance of food, one can be creative.  My family tells me that I eat like a pig.  It is not so much the sloppiness, but the things I eat.  The other day I fixed a potato salad hamburger.  I put the leftover potato salad on the meat in a bun.  It was pretty good.  Growing up I fixed many mayonnaise and sugar sandwiches.  One of my favorites is a peanut butter and cinnamon pickle sandwich.  My sister takes cucumbers and red-hot candies to make the pickles.  It is a Chilton county version of apple rings.

When there is a shortage of bread, I have combined bananas and turkey meat in the same sandwich.  Remember; don’t knock it till you try it.  With a shortage of hamburger and plenty of hog sausage, a sausage burger is real good.

Another good sandwich is leftover cold dried butter beans with catsup.  A mustard mayonnaise sandwich is good in pinch.  A leftover meatloaf spread with mayonnaise is real good.  My philosophy is, if is leftover, it can be a good sandwich.  Watching one the food channels I found out that there is a sandwich named the “Bobby.”  It is made with leftover turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and mayonnaise placed on sub sandwich bread.  After the program, my baby son Aaron said he could not believe someone made sandwiches like me.  He commented that he would like to try a “Bobby Sandwich.”  It looked good.

You will not believe it, but a story about Eddie Rickenbacker inspired this article.  Rickenbacker was a WWI flying ace that downed 26 enemy planes.  In WWII he worked in the Secretary of War Department and during one of his visits to troops was shot down in the ocean.  For twenty-four days he drifted.  About to starve to death, a seagull landed on his float.  He killed it, ate it, and lived to be rescued.

Rickenbacker’s story inspired a devotional titled “When the Seagull Doesn’t Come.”  The devotional is a reminder of faith in God.  God will never leave us nor forsake us.

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.  The Lord God is my strength . . . (Habakkuk 3:17-19a KJV).

I don’t know if momma knew these verses, but she understood the principle of faith.