Pancakes and Waffles

 I'm not sure how old I was when I first went to spend a couple of weeks with my grandparents. Not very old, maybe 5 or 6. The first week was spent with Grandma Ash and the second week with Grandma Mohr. (Notice that I haven't mentioned either Grandpa because they were here, there, and busy most days and I spent most of my time hanging out with the Grandmas.) 

My Grandma Ash made the best pancakes. No Aunt Jemima mix for her. She made them from Robin Hood flour, eggs and whatever else you needed to make a perfect pancake. They were amazing! A beautiful golden color, piping hot and topped with plenty of butter and lots of maple syrup. My breakfast of choice. I had them every day I was there. 

And then I was delivered to Grandma Mohr. My first morning there she asked what I'd like for breakfast. I said I'd like a pancake. I sat down at the table and waited while she prepared my breakfast. The plate was placed before me and I'm sure I just looked at it for a bit. The pancake was not a beautiful golden color. It was mostly white with a few brown streaks in it. The syrup wasn't honey-colored either, it was clear. This was the most anemic looking pancake I'd ever seen and I didn't even know what anemic meant. It looked nothing like the pancakes I'd grown to love the week before. Not only did it not look right, it didn't taste right, either. I had no idea what she made it with. It wouldn't have mattered if I did. At that tender age, I assumed all pancakes were made the same way and I knew it wasn't "right". And that was when I announced to my Grandma Mohr that I wanted a pancake like my Grandma Ash made. 

I don't really remember what happened after that. I probably stopped asking Granny Mohr for pancakes. And that is undoubtedly why I was not named in her will. 

My own grandchildren were fairly easy when it came to breakfast. When they were 4 or 5 they mostly wanted toaster waffles. Without butter and without syrup. Dry. But okay, it's easy and it doesn't make much of a mess. But shortly after they'd moved from Texas to Oklahoma, they came back to Texas for a visit and while I was toasting their waffles, they announced that they no longer liked Texas waffles; they only liked Oklahoma waffles. 

Indeed. I explained to them that a Leggo waffle is the same no matter what state you buy it in. I'm not sure they believed me but these are the same kids who didn't like the fresh orange juice I made in my Breville juicer because it "tasted like oranges". It seemed they preferred Sunny Delite, but I could never bring myself to buy that. My best compromise was Tropicana. 

Revolutionary Ideas

Back in the early 70s there was a "special speaker" at church. I don't remember his name, and I don't remember much what he looked like, but I remember why he was there. I also remember the gist of what he said and at least one very specific thing he said. 

He was there to drum up support, mostly financial, for a private Christian academy. This was necessary because public schools were godless places that would corrupt children. He even asked the very attentive audience "Do you know what they are teaching your children in public school?? (He repeated the question for effect before answering it himself.) Your kids are being taught that our nation's founding fathers were a bunch of rebel-rousing revolutionaries!!" Well, I was probably the only person sitting in that congregation who didn't gasp and clutch my pearls. 

Why did he think it was called the American "Revolution"? Revolutionary wars typically involve revolutionaries. In my world, the word revolutionary has never had negative connotations. But just for the record, I wanted my child to be taught that the founding fathers were revolutionaries. Because they were. Regardless of their motivations, the American form of democracy was revolutionary in the 18th century. 

But apparently enough people were appalled at the idea of the truth being taught to their kids that they threw their support behind the idea and the Elyria Christian Academy opened around 1974, with the support of a number of churches. It operated for a couple of years before the Baptists and a large non-denominational church fell out and started their own schools. I wasn't privy to the source of the discord, probably something political or perhaps a finer point of theology, but I also wasn't surprised. I've known a lot of people who are "my way or the highway" kind of folks - we won't name names. 

At the time, the idea was to reject all state funds because the school would be exempt from state rules if they didn't take the money. I don't know if that worked out. My assumption is that the state could still impose some minimum standards on education, even if they didn't control the curriculum. I'm going to throw out a wild pitch here, but there are some faith-based schools in the UK where the students learn to read the Quran. That would be okay if they learned some other basics, too. But they don't. Needless to say, once they "graduate" they are not qualified to do anything but read the Quran. So I'm inclined to favor some minimum standards in education. 

But let's fast forward fifty years. They no longer want their own schools where they can teach their own world view. They want the the rest of us to pay for it. (And by "they" I'm not talking about these schools in particular but by Christian schools in general.) They want that government money, in the form of vouchers, to support their schools without losing their autonomy. They also want public schools to teach their world view. Because if they're paying tax, they should be able to dictate how things go. Fifty years ago I objected to the school because I found the idea of painting the founding fathers as something they were not objectionable. I also objected to placing a child in an environment where they would only be exposed to one viewpoint. But the fact that other people did not want their children exposed to ideas that might be different from their own didn't really bother me. But now they're trying to impose their own views on everyone, and that does bother me. 

Just a note before someone calls me out for sending my child to this school: It was never my idea and it's not something I would have paid for. My parents wanted to pay for it and the child wanted to go. I allowed it because I was in the process of moving from Ohio to Texas and knew that he would not be in that school longer than one semester. Turns out it was about 2 and 1/2 months in the fifth grade. We've never really had an in depth discussion about his time there. I do know that he had a wonderful, caring teacher, but then he had some of those in public schools, as well.