The Last Meal I Ever Cooked
It was 1967. Upon graduation from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, I transferred to Biola College in La Mirada, California. This place was a whole new setting from urban Chicago. It was more of what one would think of when he pictured a college campus. I decided shortly after I got there that I did not want to live in the Mens’ dorms. So I spied some ads from a campus housing bulletin board and landed in a private home in Norwalk where a former Biola student who was now married with a family gave me a room in exchange for some help around his pad. When I awoke after the first night there, I was scratching myself like a zoo monkey. Little red holes were all over me. When I got back from school that evening, his house was under what looked like a circus tent. I had not seen that before. He told me that the joint was infested and was being fumigated. The next day when I got back into that place, I packed like the cops were coming and related to him some tale of woe about how an emergency had suddenly arisen that urgently required me to vacate the premises. He walked me to the car cajoling me to reconsider. I floored the gas pedal and never saw him - or his lovely daughter - again.
I was back in the dorm for a brief time before I discovered a more promising pad up in Alhambra, about 25 miles away. Again, it was a free gig. But this time I didn’t have to do anything. There was an old woman about 90 years old who lived alone in her house since her preacher husband had died years before, and she was scared crapless in the dark when she heard all kinds of bumps in the night. Knowing Biola well, she requested a Christian student to come up there and sleep in one of her bedrooms in case the Philistines came upon her in the middle of the night. Mrs. Philpotts was her name. A sweet old soul. Hair as white as snow. She was also round and over weight. My specific job was to arrive at the house at a reasonable hour before the bandits were likely to arrive and before she bounced into her rack like an earth ball. If during the night calamity rained down upon us, it was her hope that my young 21 year old, lithe, body would vault off the springs, come crashing through the bedroom door without opening it, and eliminate the threat. It was my hope that I would not have to test my manhood against a gun or knife-wielding thug.
One benefit was that I obtained a private parking place in her driveway on a quiet street since she had no car. Having a car in the driveway was her theory to keep evil doers at bay.
Now it was about this same time that a momentous event occurred that nearly ended Mrs. Philpotts’ life by having invited me into her home for her protection. I met Linda. Linda was a sophomore at Biola and in her first year as a student there. By Divine Providence, we had been thrown together into a traveling singing group called The Collegians, a group of about 20 students who traveled and performed concerts on the West Coast. I spotted her the first day we came together for practice, and within 2-3 months, we were on TV in Los Angeles as a guest singing group for John MacArthur’s father’s Sunday morning TV program in Los Angeles. That is the day things started happening.
As we waited behind the scenes for our time to come on, we sat and flirted upon the famous three chairs of the TV show The Dating Game which broadcasted from this studio in Burbank while Morey Amsterdam and Charlie Weaver stood nearby having a discussion. As we returned to the college by bus, we locked eyes a number of times and fired up a conversation in which I invited her to come hear me preach a sermon that night in a church in Santa Ana. That was our first date. When we got to the church, a man invited Linda and me to bring the special music when he found out we were in The Collegians. We had never sung together before, but we practiced with the accompanist before the service began and went over the hymn “Grace Greater Than Our Sin.” I sang the harmony. It was when we actually stood to sing that a magic moment took place. At one point in the second verse, although we had not practiced it, we paused at EXACTLY the same time after the word “Look.” As we did this, we turned and took a glance at each other like, “What just happened?” It caused a woman to come up to me afterwards and say, “How long have you and your wife been married?”
That was what got Mrs. Philpotts nearly killed because from that moment on I never appeared at her house until she was in bed shaking like she was hiding in a closet while listening to Dracula walking around the house stalking her. Once I got with Linda during the day while I was on campus, it was as if I was handcuffed to her. I could not pull myself away until the very last second. When I did, I jumped in my black and white chevy (which looked like I was the Highway Patrol) and drove up the Santa Ana Freeway for Alhambra like I was Charleton Heston in the Omega Man coming back to his fortress apartment before the zombies came out at night. I would pull into Mrs. Philpotts’ driveway with the bright headlights filling her bedroom. Little did I know that this was like the blinding light of the space craft in Alien landing in her yard and emptying itself of saliva-dripping heads within other saliva-dripping heads coming for her. On top of this, I came through the back door with the racket of hit men looking for the government’s secret witness. On most of these nights, Mrs. Philpotts was standing in her negligee in her bedroom doorway as white as a sheet praying and pleading for mercy, scared crapless and with her large breasts heaving in and out as if she had run a marathon and reminding me of my vow to get in early so she would not have a cardial infarction. Like an Irish Catholic school boy in a confession booth, I guaranteed her that I would not scare the crap out of her again. But my pledge was as useless as John Gotti’s. I just could not detach myself from the likes of Linda no matter how hard I tried, and every night I flew up the Sana Ana and the 710 like a fire engine and jolted the old lady awake, she hoping this was not her time to be with the Lord. There is no telling what Mrs Philpotts said aloud in that bed when at the midnight hour I sprang upon her as if I was coming through the back door with a battering ram mounted on an armored vehicle, preacher’s wife or no.
To compound the issue, in 1968 I got a summer job as the driver of a roach coach. A roach coach was a pickup truck with a restaurant mounted on the back. I would pull into job sites, throw up the sides and back hatch to reveal a cornucopia of crap for people to eat. I had cold sandwiches, pop, boiled eggs, bags of chips, juice, donuts, coffee, and Tommy Burgers. As I drove all over downtown Los Angeles to stops on my route, I used the back of that truck as my own personal refrigerator during the summer of 1968. In between stops as I drove with one hand, I ate non-stop like a starving skeleton in Bangladesh, especially those chili-and-cheese-coated Tommy Burgers. This brought me into the old lady’s house way after midnight. Mrs. Philpotts was probably riding the porcelain throne like a motorcycle most nights.
Anyway, after about a year and a half, Linda and I decided we were going to get married in the late summer of 1969. I was still at Mrs. Philpotts’ house coming in at all hours. With the rolling delicatessen a distant memory now and marriage on the way in the summer of 1969, I got this romantic notion in my mind that rather than taking all my nourishment in eateries, I would do what I had seen so many of my other colleagues do. I would start cooking my own mouthwatering meals. One time in the dorm I saw this guy who had nothing more than a hot plate in his room. He would work during the day, and, since he would miss the cafeteria meals, he would don the while hat and rustle up grub in his room on that hot plate. I remember one time I saw him take a bunch of mushrooms, place them in a pan of boiling water, and gobble down some mushroom soup. My mouth watered as I watched the brown heads rolling around in that water and softening up. How hard can that be, I thought.
So during the summer of 1969, I thought I would try my hand at cooking and thus enjoying sumptuous meals by my own hand. Mrs. Philpotts had a kitchen stocked with utensils that she probably never used anyway because she was scared out of her pants most of the time if she didn’t get the kitchen cleaned up before sunset. So I was set there. Besides, she was off some place for a while and not home. Off I went to the supermarket and bought a sack of my favorite food for a gourmet meal. I brought it all home and started in at 5 pm.
I had a nice steak red and ready. So I would start with that as the entree. I threw that thing in the oven and broiled it up. On to the plate it went, and I sauntered off to the living room to watch the news as I pounded that down. After I savored that piece of gristle and chewed it off of the bone, I took a break to decide what would be next. In the bag was one of my favorites. Peas. Frozen peas. Out of the bag they came and into a sauce pan with some butter. I brought it all to a boil, let it cool a bit, and dumped them all onto the meat stained plate. Again I headed off to the TV to watch Cal Worthington hawk an endless parade of cars from his Dodge dealership. When the last pea disappeared, I sat back again, thinking. I came to the conclusion that I was still hungry. So I headed back to the bag and discovered the box of frozen corn waiting for me. Again, I dumped the box into more boiling water for the prescribed length of time. I turned the pan upside down letting the golden kernels pile on top of the meat grease and pea juice. More TV as I wolfed down the whole box of corn. More contemplation. I came from a line of thinking that said all meals must be crowned with a dessert. Back to the kitchen where I pulled out my favorite from the bag. A box of tapioca. Old Mom used to whip that stuff up without an egg in sight. I followed her recipe and emptied that box into a pan of milk and waited for it to boil. A period of cooling followed. Late Night with Johnny Carson was now on TV. Directly from the pan with a table spoon, I lapped up the tapioca, scraping the spoon against the metal to get every grain. Now it was time to clean up the mess. By the time I got all that crap cleaned up and back in the cupboards, The Wolf Man Meets Godzilla was coming on television. It was 1 am.
1 a.m. I had been cooking and eating for eight hours. I knew if I did this for every meal, I would never get out of the house. Whatever that day was in the summer of 1969 - to this day - was the last day in my life that I ever cooked a complete meal.
I was back in the dorm for a brief time before I discovered a more promising pad up in Alhambra, about 25 miles away. Again, it was a free gig. But this time I didn’t have to do anything. There was an old woman about 90 years old who lived alone in her house since her preacher husband had died years before, and she was scared crapless in the dark when she heard all kinds of bumps in the night. Knowing Biola well, she requested a Christian student to come up there and sleep in one of her bedrooms in case the Philistines came upon her in the middle of the night. Mrs. Philpotts was her name. A sweet old soul. Hair as white as snow. She was also round and over weight. My specific job was to arrive at the house at a reasonable hour before the bandits were likely to arrive and before she bounced into her rack like an earth ball. If during the night calamity rained down upon us, it was her hope that my young 21 year old, lithe, body would vault off the springs, come crashing through the bedroom door without opening it, and eliminate the threat. It was my hope that I would not have to test my manhood against a gun or knife-wielding thug.
One benefit was that I obtained a private parking place in her driveway on a quiet street since she had no car. Having a car in the driveway was her theory to keep evil doers at bay.
Now it was about this same time that a momentous event occurred that nearly ended Mrs. Philpotts’ life by having invited me into her home for her protection. I met Linda. Linda was a sophomore at Biola and in her first year as a student there. By Divine Providence, we had been thrown together into a traveling singing group called The Collegians, a group of about 20 students who traveled and performed concerts on the West Coast. I spotted her the first day we came together for practice, and within 2-3 months, we were on TV in Los Angeles as a guest singing group for John MacArthur’s father’s Sunday morning TV program in Los Angeles. That is the day things started happening.
As we waited behind the scenes for our time to come on, we sat and flirted upon the famous three chairs of the TV show The Dating Game which broadcasted from this studio in Burbank while Morey Amsterdam and Charlie Weaver stood nearby having a discussion. As we returned to the college by bus, we locked eyes a number of times and fired up a conversation in which I invited her to come hear me preach a sermon that night in a church in Santa Ana. That was our first date. When we got to the church, a man invited Linda and me to bring the special music when he found out we were in The Collegians. We had never sung together before, but we practiced with the accompanist before the service began and went over the hymn “Grace Greater Than Our Sin.” I sang the harmony. It was when we actually stood to sing that a magic moment took place. At one point in the second verse, although we had not practiced it, we paused at EXACTLY the same time after the word “Look.” As we did this, we turned and took a glance at each other like, “What just happened?” It caused a woman to come up to me afterwards and say, “How long have you and your wife been married?”
That was what got Mrs. Philpotts nearly killed because from that moment on I never appeared at her house until she was in bed shaking like she was hiding in a closet while listening to Dracula walking around the house stalking her. Once I got with Linda during the day while I was on campus, it was as if I was handcuffed to her. I could not pull myself away until the very last second. When I did, I jumped in my black and white chevy (which looked like I was the Highway Patrol) and drove up the Santa Ana Freeway for Alhambra like I was Charleton Heston in the Omega Man coming back to his fortress apartment before the zombies came out at night. I would pull into Mrs. Philpotts’ driveway with the bright headlights filling her bedroom. Little did I know that this was like the blinding light of the space craft in Alien landing in her yard and emptying itself of saliva-dripping heads within other saliva-dripping heads coming for her. On top of this, I came through the back door with the racket of hit men looking for the government’s secret witness. On most of these nights, Mrs. Philpotts was standing in her negligee in her bedroom doorway as white as a sheet praying and pleading for mercy, scared crapless and with her large breasts heaving in and out as if she had run a marathon and reminding me of my vow to get in early so she would not have a cardial infarction. Like an Irish Catholic school boy in a confession booth, I guaranteed her that I would not scare the crap out of her again. But my pledge was as useless as John Gotti’s. I just could not detach myself from the likes of Linda no matter how hard I tried, and every night I flew up the Sana Ana and the 710 like a fire engine and jolted the old lady awake, she hoping this was not her time to be with the Lord. There is no telling what Mrs Philpotts said aloud in that bed when at the midnight hour I sprang upon her as if I was coming through the back door with a battering ram mounted on an armored vehicle, preacher’s wife or no.
To compound the issue, in 1968 I got a summer job as the driver of a roach coach. A roach coach was a pickup truck with a restaurant mounted on the back. I would pull into job sites, throw up the sides and back hatch to reveal a cornucopia of crap for people to eat. I had cold sandwiches, pop, boiled eggs, bags of chips, juice, donuts, coffee, and Tommy Burgers. As I drove all over downtown Los Angeles to stops on my route, I used the back of that truck as my own personal refrigerator during the summer of 1968. In between stops as I drove with one hand, I ate non-stop like a starving skeleton in Bangladesh, especially those chili-and-cheese-coated Tommy Burgers. This brought me into the old lady’s house way after midnight. Mrs. Philpotts was probably riding the porcelain throne like a motorcycle most nights.
Anyway, after about a year and a half, Linda and I decided we were going to get married in the late summer of 1969. I was still at Mrs. Philpotts’ house coming in at all hours. With the rolling delicatessen a distant memory now and marriage on the way in the summer of 1969, I got this romantic notion in my mind that rather than taking all my nourishment in eateries, I would do what I had seen so many of my other colleagues do. I would start cooking my own mouthwatering meals. One time in the dorm I saw this guy who had nothing more than a hot plate in his room. He would work during the day, and, since he would miss the cafeteria meals, he would don the while hat and rustle up grub in his room on that hot plate. I remember one time I saw him take a bunch of mushrooms, place them in a pan of boiling water, and gobble down some mushroom soup. My mouth watered as I watched the brown heads rolling around in that water and softening up. How hard can that be, I thought.
So during the summer of 1969, I thought I would try my hand at cooking and thus enjoying sumptuous meals by my own hand. Mrs. Philpotts had a kitchen stocked with utensils that she probably never used anyway because she was scared out of her pants most of the time if she didn’t get the kitchen cleaned up before sunset. So I was set there. Besides, she was off some place for a while and not home. Off I went to the supermarket and bought a sack of my favorite food for a gourmet meal. I brought it all home and started in at 5 pm.
I had a nice steak red and ready. So I would start with that as the entree. I threw that thing in the oven and broiled it up. On to the plate it went, and I sauntered off to the living room to watch the news as I pounded that down. After I savored that piece of gristle and chewed it off of the bone, I took a break to decide what would be next. In the bag was one of my favorites. Peas. Frozen peas. Out of the bag they came and into a sauce pan with some butter. I brought it all to a boil, let it cool a bit, and dumped them all onto the meat stained plate. Again I headed off to the TV to watch Cal Worthington hawk an endless parade of cars from his Dodge dealership. When the last pea disappeared, I sat back again, thinking. I came to the conclusion that I was still hungry. So I headed back to the bag and discovered the box of frozen corn waiting for me. Again, I dumped the box into more boiling water for the prescribed length of time. I turned the pan upside down letting the golden kernels pile on top of the meat grease and pea juice. More TV as I wolfed down the whole box of corn. More contemplation. I came from a line of thinking that said all meals must be crowned with a dessert. Back to the kitchen where I pulled out my favorite from the bag. A box of tapioca. Old Mom used to whip that stuff up without an egg in sight. I followed her recipe and emptied that box into a pan of milk and waited for it to boil. A period of cooling followed. Late Night with Johnny Carson was now on TV. Directly from the pan with a table spoon, I lapped up the tapioca, scraping the spoon against the metal to get every grain. Now it was time to clean up the mess. By the time I got all that crap cleaned up and back in the cupboards, The Wolf Man Meets Godzilla was coming on television. It was 1 am.
1 a.m. I had been cooking and eating for eight hours. I knew if I did this for every meal, I would never get out of the house. Whatever that day was in the summer of 1969 - to this day - was the last day in my life that I ever cooked a complete meal.