March 16, 2007

Scrambled Eggs and Hank Wounk

Read: 2 Timothy 1:3-5

On a summer day in the early 60's my brothers and I were playing with some of our buddies in the back yard. Crawling in under some shrubs and pine trees we created what most kids would call a fort. The trees and shrubs were so thick, no one could see in but we could see out. (Mom saw us the whole time). At the time, our dad was opening a new furniture store, so our fort became a store and we named it “the Hank Wounk Store”. We played in there all summer. None of us remembers who Hank Wounk was.

One day after a whole morning of hard work in the store, Mom came out with lunch, as she always did. This time it was a plate stacked with scrambled egg sandwiches, cut on the diagonal, they taste better that way. My brothers, our buddies, and I didn’t eat them - we inhaled them. That day I thought I could live the rest of my life eating nothing but scrambled egg sandwiches. Then it was back to work on some very important construction projects in the sandbox. We had the biggest sandbox in the neighborhood.

One may not think of the significance of scrambled egg sandwiches at first. Emeril himself couldn’t hold a candle to my Mom's cooking. When you factor in the hope and dreams of a young mother and the love and attention she puts into everything she does for her children, the sandwiches become something more. They become a cherished memory for a lifetime, and a life lesson that can’t be taught in any other school.

As time goes on and I become older I find more often than not, it’s the little, seemingly insignificant things we do for people, for no particular reason at all, that added up make the world a better place.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Ron Draper

PS: My Dad Wears a Cape and Flies in through the Window! Always Has, Always Will!

This may look weird at 1st glance, but if you consider the context and inner meaning of who wrote it and who it's about, I think it applies to all of us at some level.