Suburban Renewal

by Pamela Morsi

  I wanted to somehow mechanize the process. I got an old sausage maker at a salvage yard and, using the mechanic’s skills I’d learned in oil well service, I refurbished and jury-rigged it to squeeze out the paste, lay a line of tamale filling and cover it over.

  That was actually fairly easy. But I had no luck with coming up with a way to automatically wrap the tamale. Cornshucks, being a natural, organic product were all unique. They varied in size, shape and the grooves on them were as distinctive as snowflakes.

  I called several commercial tamale producers to ask questions. The response was that to wrap them mechanically, I would have to use paper. We tried that. But cooking in paper just didn’t create the flavor we got with the cornshuck wrap. We couldn’t compromise taste over ease of production.

  We used our revamped sausage maker to produce an endless line of tamales, but every one had to be folded by hand.

  Customers started sitting at the drugstore’s soda fountain and ordering a drink with their tamales. There was so much “consuming on the premises” as they say in restaurant lingo, that we brought in some more tables to expand the seating. And if people were going to eat in the drugstore they didn’t want a brown paper bag with a dozen inside. They wanted a plate with a tamale or two, a choice of salsas and a bag of tortilla chips. This meant new pricing, napkins, dishes and flatware.

  We were serving four days a week. And lunch times had become so busy that Hye Won was running back and forth between the pharmacy and helping me wait tables. Finally she started bringing her sixteen-year-old sister to help. With her bright smile, cute figure and waist-length black hair, Jin had half the love-starved guys from Lumkee High crowding one another for seats.

  Things were going so well that for Nate’s birthday we got him a new, professional-grade table saw. I knew that most boys at his age, including myself, would have much preferred a car, even the worst old junker. Nate was so happy, I was sure I detected moisture gathering in his eyes. He blinked it back, but he was still too choked up to even speak.

  That night alone in our bed, Corrie and I talked about it.

  “There were times when I thought by sixteen Nate might be dead, on drugs or in prison,” I admitted.

  Corrie snuggled up close to me. “I’ve been scared for him since he was five,” she said.

  “I’m not saying our worries are over,” I told her. “There are a lot of stupid mistakes a guy can make between here and the rest of his life. But at least now we know he has a fighting chance.”

  “I’m so proud of him,” she said. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “You understood him and you found a way to help him.”

  I shrugged off the compliment and she gave me a little kiss.

  “Are you tired?”

  “Completely exhausted,” I answered.

  “Me, too,” she said. “I guess that means we can’t have sex, huh?”

  “I’ll try if you’ll try,” I said.

  “I’ll try, but you’ve got to try harder,” she shot back.

  We laughed together at her little naughty joke. And then we made love.

  In September, Lauren returned home, happy and tanned. Her Spanish was much improved and her outlook on the world brighter and more filled with hope.

  She started her senior year by stepping down as cheerleader. It was the kind of action that shocked the neighborhood as deeply as some terrible scandal. Apparently cheerleaders only gave up their positions when their pom-poms were pried from their cold, dead hands.

  Lauren claimed she simply was no longer interested. And she never showed even the slightest indication of missing it. She continued to put in hours after school at the drugstore and tamale duty in the evenings. But other than that, she was totally immersed in her church work, her studies and her plans for the future.

  One surprising development that came from Lauren’s summer with the Mexican migrant workers helped our business—she brought home a half-dozen new recipes for tamale filling.

  “When the moms of my kids heard that I liked to make tamales,” she told us, “they all wanted to share their recipes with me.”

  She had recipes for beef tamales, chicken tamales and brown-bean tamales.

  We tried them all and we liked them. We were all getting creative with the cooking and added and improved on what we made.

  “If we want new recipes,” Corrie said, “I’m sure there are millions on the Internet.”

  Nate checked it out for us and came back with ideas we’d never expected. Catfish tamales, chiles-and-cheese tamales, shrimp tamales, bacon tamales, spinach tamales, pineapple-corn tamales.

  It was almost more than a family, in danger of serious tamale fatigue, could even take in.

  We decided that along with our original pork filling, we’d try one new recipe per week for eat-in customers only.

  It was a smashing success. The people of Lumkee had an insatiable appetite for tamales. We’d paid for our new rooms on the house. We were banking money in savings for the kids’ education. We gave the tired old Volvo to Lauren and bought a brand new car.

  In early November the Food Section of the Tulsa World wrote one little paragraph about Okie Tamales in Lumkee. After that, I quit my job and purchased the empty five-and-dime building next to the drugstore. Our new sign was created from three-foot-high neon instead of felt pen.

  Corrie

  1996

  The phenomenal success of Okie Tamales came as a big surprise to me. I guess it came as a surprise to everyone. One minute we were sitting around our kitchen making tamales for family therapy, and the next our product was being sold in grocery stores all over the state.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t that fast, but almost.

  Sam quit his job and devoted himself full-time to the business. But he couldn’t do it all himself.

  Although I was proud and pleased, and Sam spoke of our streak of good fortune as a “true family venture” where everybody’s efforts had counted, it was Sam who got patted on the back from people around town. It was Sam who was nominated for businessperson of the year by the Chamber of Commerce. It was Sam who was a guest speaker at the Oklahoma Grocers Association.

  I found this vague feeling of jealousy haunting me. For so long now I had been the star player in our family. All the years that Sam was out of work, I was the person to keep things going. I was the one who’d pursued my education. I was the one who’d tried to better myself. I was the one who worked to get ahead. After years of sacrifice and struggle, my master’s degree was only a thesis away from completion. Yet the added income that it would mean was no longer critical to sending the kids to college. For ten years I had been the one to bring home the biggest paycheck. I liked that. I’d grown so accustomed to it. I was buoyed by it. Sam’s sudden, seemingly undeserved, falling-into-a-pot-of-jam success was, for me, somehow deflating.

  I found myself denigrating his achievement, minimizing his accomplishment. There was no one better to aid me in this unkind pursuit than my own mother.

  “It’s not like he’s found a cure for cancer,” I complained to her. “He’s making tamales, for heaven’s sake. Any illiterate Mexican grandma across the border can do it.”

  Mom nodded in complete agreement. “I just hope and pray every day that the children are not lured away from their potential intellectual achievements by the fast, easy money of their father’s get-rich-quick scheme.”

  I nodded in agreement. Although, the terms “fast, easy money” and “get rich quick” didn’t quite jive with the reality of my husband tiptoeing around the house in the morning before leaving for work at 5:00 a.m.

  “I just hate having the Maynard name associated with such a déclassé enterprise,” Mom continued. “It was bad enough when Sam was in the oil business. Oil is necessarily dirty. But food service? And not even a nice restaurant with tablecloths. He actually sells food in brown paper bags.”

  It was true. Fresh tamales were sold at the door and the only
change in the packing was that the bags now had the Okie Tamales name and logo. Even the vacuumsealed packs that went into the grocery stores were designed to look like brown paper.

  “And the jabbering that goes on in that factory,” Mom continued. “Well, I know that’s as much your father’s fault as your husband’s, but it is just so off-putting.”

  The jabbering that she referred to was Korean.

  Though business in the drugstore was doing much better, my dad decided that he was as recovered as he was going to get and that he much preferred semi-retirement to the headaches of owning the store.

  He sold Maynard Drug to Hye Won and her older brother, Song, a thoracic surgeon in Tulsa. They turned around and hired Dad to be her part-time, backup pharmacist. It was just a few hours a week and perfect for him.

  Hye Won bought a nice big home in Lumkee and moved her parents and her two youngest siblings in with her. Mr. Chai had been a gardener and Mrs. Chai, a housewife. Sam hired them both to work for him in the tamale factory. It was mostly sit-down work and they were right next door to their daughter every day. As the business expanded, the Chais brought along relatives, friends and acquaintances. Sam hired them on as he needed them. Mr. Chai was the natural manager and kept everybody on time and on task. Okie Tamales was the only downtown Lumkee business where Korean was the spoken language.

  The Chai teenagers, Jin and Chano, helped after school both at the tamale factory and in the drugstore. Jin was Nate’s age, cute, popular and the brightest student in her class. Chano was just starting out in high school. He made good grades, although he was not considered as smart as his sister. But he was athletic, which guaranteed him success at Lumkee High.

  I liked the family. At the university, I’d met lots of different people and I thought diversity was good for our community. It was Sam who’d accomplished that. It was just another reason for me to be annoyed at him.

  I tried to work through it—to rationalize my way through my irrational envy. I concentrated on my thesis: Designing Classrooms for Optimal Learning. My idea was to assess student-task completion in classrooms designed to be psychologically positive for specific age behavior and contrast those numbers with classrooms of traditional design that focused on workplace needs of teachers. It was a daunting undertaking, forcing me to create the test environment, formulate the assessments and then do them, both in the new classroom and the traditional one.

  For the first time in all my studies, the Internet became my prime source for research. The computer had been part of the library for years now. And with a certifiable geek in our midst at home, I was certainly familiar with the World Wide Web. But it was not until this thesis that I learned so much of the latest and best was out there at the touch of my fingertips. I was able to contact teachers with experience in classroom design from all over the country. And by connecting with them, I quickly discovered that my ideas were in the forefront of new thinking on the subject.

  I also discovered some software programs online that were used by dot.com home-decoration sites and could be modified for use in classrooms. In fact, I became very excited about some of the knowledge base I discovered in home decor and how flawlessly it could be transferred to learning spaces.

  I quit competing with Lauren and Nate for computer time and went out and bought myself an updated, high-powered, high-dollar laptop. Doggedly I pursued my own interests and concentrated on my goals. And tried not to compare them to those of Sam or Okie Tamales.

  I was rudely jerked out of my personal quest and preoccupation with a bombshell dropped by my daughter.

  Lauren, with her perfect features and long, chestnut hair, had grown into a tall, lean beauty, the kind you see staring back at you from all the fashion magazines. She was not the number-one student in her class, but she was easily in the top five. A National Merit Scholar, she made 1420 on her SATs. We were thrilled. Along with her extra-curricular activities, volunteer work and social activism, she was as incredibly impressive on a college entrance application as she was in person.

  Sam and I had high expectations. Certainly we expected a scholarship from some good local colleges. We might even get some from distant, more prestigious institutions. And we were both agreed that if she was accepted at some fabulous Ivy League school, we’d see that she got the education she wanted, no matter how we had to pay for it.

  With all the paperwork in the mail, we waited to see what would happen, what she would decide and where she would go.

  Sam and I were on pins and needles. And when letters came from all over the country from universities wanting her to attend, we were thrilled. All that was left was her decision.

  I was torn between wanting her to stay close to home where we could see her often, and wanting for her the adventure of a faraway school where the educational standard was phenomenal and everyone and everything was a brand-new experience.

  “I’ve decided,” she said one evening when it was just the three of us at home.

  “That’s wonderful,” I told her. “Your father and I are so excited and anxious to hear.”

  Truly, we were both on the edge of our seats.

  Lauren hesitated, as if she was loathe to share the news with us.

  “Mom, Dad,” she said, first biting her lip and then taking a deep breath for courage, “I’ve chosen the Latin American studies program at Living Waters Bible College in Earline, Mississippi,” she said.

  For a long moment there was a complete stunned silence in our family room.

  Sam and I looked at each other.

  “Is this a joke?” Sam asked.

  “No, Daddy,” she said. “There is nothing to joke about.”

  “Bible college?”

  “Earline, Mississippi?”

  Our questions bordered on the incredulous.

  “They have the most intensive program in the country,” she said. “I can get a bachelor of Bible degree in three years. And with my major as Latin American studies, well, the opportunities are tremendous.”

  “Latin American studies?” I asked. “You’re planning to teach?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, and then corrected herself. “Well, on some level you could say that I am.” Lauren took another deep breath and gave us a bright smile. “I’ve received my call.”

  I couldn’t imagine what she meant.

  “This Living Waters Bible College called you?”

  “No, no, God has called me,” she said. “He’s called me to tend his sheep, his poor forgotten sheep in countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. I’m going to be a missionary.”

  “A missionary?” Sam and I responded in unison.

  “I’m taking up my cross and following Christ’s admonition to go unto all the world and teach the gospel,” she said. “I’ve been called to take the message of Christ to the people of South America.”

  “I thought the people of South America were all Catholics,” Sam said.

  “Catholicism may be the state religion,” Lauren corrected him, “but most of the poor people, the native peoples, still worship as they did a thousand years ago.”

  Sam shrugged. “If it’s worked for a thousand years, why mess with it?”

  Lauren was in no frame of mind to appreciate humor.

  “I knew that you wouldn’t be accepting,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve put off telling you for months because I was afraid you’d be like this.”

  “It’s just such a shock,” I told her.

  “Why is it a shock?” she asked me defensively. “Did you think that I would follow along in this clean comfortable place I’ve always been sheltered in? That I would never have the courage to look out to a broader world and say, ‘Where can I do some good?’ Do you just want me to marry some nice fellow from the next suburb over, and drive a couple of overindulged, over-protected children around in a minivan? Is that what you want for me?”

  “No, of course not, Lauren,” I assured her. “Have your father and I ever suggested that we didn’t want anything but fo
r you to fly as high as you can? We want you to reach your potential. You are a bright young woman. Of course you want to make a difference in the world. But there are a lot of ways to do that. A lot of ways that don’t involve Bible college or mud huts in the Andes.”

  “Think of what a smart mind like yours might be able to come up with in a research lab or behind a telescope,” Sam said. “I’m not saying that what you’re proposing isn’t a good thing, but with all the brains and talent that you have, you could be put to better use in a broader way.”

  “This is where God wants me,” she stated adamantly. “You’re my parents, I love you and honor you. But I must go where God leads me. The harvest is truly heavy, but the laborers are few.”

  There is never any way to have a rational discussion with someone who answers all questions with biblical quotes.

  “You may think I’m wasting my life,” Lauren said. “But Gram would be proud of me. I know if Gram was here, she’d be proud of me.”

  “She would,” Sam agreed. “She was always proud of you. And we are, too.”

  That night as Sam and I lay in the bed in our new, spacious master bedroom suite at the back of the house, we tried to shore up our disappointment by being philosophical.

  “She’s barely eighteen,” I pointed out. “If we give her some space, then somehow she will find herself and her own direction.”

  “Our children are truly amazing,” Sam said. “One tries to be so bad, we never know what he might do. And the other one tries to be so good, we never know what she might do.”

  “I’m afraid for her out in the world,” I admitted. “I’m afraid for both of them.”

  Sam nodded. “Me, too. When they were little I thought that if they could just get big enough then I wouldn’t worry. The worries get bigger as fast as the kids.”

  “I don’t think that ever stops,” I told him. “I remember having a talk with Gram after Floyd Braydon came to town. She was worried, but she had faith that you’d turn out all right.”