Huckleberry Hound’s lazy drawl drifted into my kitchen that Saturday morning in the fall of 1959. His antics would keep my two young children occupied while I cooked some oatmeal for breakfast. The television was a poor babysitter, but what other option did I have?
My husband had left us. We got no support from him, financial or otherwise. We’d lost everything we owned in a fire and had to start over from scratch. There wasn’t much assistance for single mothers back then, so the free entertainment the television offered was a big help.
I opened the cupboard to see what I could make for dinner later. Not much. Some nights I felt like I was trying to conjure a meal out of nothing. I cooked little more than beans, spaghetti, macaroni and tuna casserole.
“Looks like beans again,” I said, taking the lone bag off the shelf. We enjoyed them as long as something gave them flavor: beans with ham hock, beans with ground beef. Tonight, though, all I had was a single onion.
One onion. How had it come to this? We were surviving, but barely. I was angry with God. I couldn’t help it. Can’t you see we’re struggling, Lord? Can’t you show us you care?
I had just finished washing the oatmeal pot when there was a knock at the door. It was Theresa from across the street. We weren’t the only family in the neighborhood scraping by. Theresa and her husband were too, with four little girls to raise.
Even so, on weekdays, she’d take my son to school with her kids and watch him in the afternoons until I got home from my job as a switchboard operator. I didn’t know what I’d do without her.
“Could I borrow an onion?” Theresa asked. “I’m making beans for dinner and I’ve run out.”
I can’t spare it, I thought. I could say I was out as well. But I didn’t. She’d done so much for me.
“Sure, Theresa, I just happen to have one,” I said.
As I reached into the cupboard, a Bible verse came to mind: “Whatsoever you shall give in my name, it shall be returned to you one hundredfold.” Ha. When did I ever get a hundredfold anything?
Okay, God, I thought, handing over my last onion, I’m giving in your name. Let’s see if you’re true to your word. It wasn’t a prayer, it was a frustrated challenge.
No onions appeared in the laundry room or tumbled out of the cupboards after Theresa left. I went to the living room to do some cleaning. Another knock at the door. Theresa again? No. A Watkins salesman was standing there.
Watkins men were a familiar sight, going door to door selling household items, spices and other things I couldn’t afford. “You’re wasting your time here,” I told the man. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t buy anything.”
He looked around my sparse living room. “I understand,” he said. “You have a nice day, ma’am.” He turned to leave, then stopped, reaching into his bag. “Here, try this,” he said. He held out a small envelope.
I pushed it right back. “I really can’t afford anything,” I said firmly.
“It’s a free sample,” he said. “We just want to see if people like it.”
“Well, if there’s no charge…. You have a nice day too.”
The Watkins man walked down the block. I held up the envelope to read the label.
I didn’t know it, but better times were ahead. Soon I’d meet a man who would become my husband for the next 50 years. My kids would go on to have families of their own. We’d be well cared for.
All I knew right then was that we’d enjoy our beans that night. Flavored with hundreds of dehydrated onion flakes. Compliments of the Watkins man.
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