BRIAN LIBBY

Goodbye to Aunt Betty

Last Friday morning we said goodbye to my great aunt Betty Lehman, who passed away at the age of 82 after a bout with cancer.

Throughout most of my life growing up in McMinnville, I remember visiting Betty and Bob at their farm outside Amity. She offered an invariably warm, quietly affectionate presence. Not once in my first 18 years did she forget to send me a birthday card. The Yamhill River runs along their property, and we’d often gather there in summertime along a small beach for swimming and barbecues. As we’d arrive at the farm Aunt Betty would often be tending her garden outside the old farmhouse. Roses were her favorite.

And perhaps those roses were her greatest extravagance. Born in Birch Tree, Missouri in 1923, Betty was throughout her life a practicing Mennonite. Although I don’t know a lot about that denomination, the Mennonites are loosely related to the Amish and share some like-minded views about shunning technology. Betty rode in cars, for example, but there wasn’t a television in her house. Life on a small family farm is tough, and she toiled just as hard as Bob or their three sons.

In addition to her work on the farm and taking care of the family, Betty also was a school bus driver for 26 years. My favorite anecdote from the memorial service was how, if the kids on her route got too raucous and loud on the way to or from school, Betty would simply pull over to the side of the road, take out a book, and start reading. She never scolded them. Sooner or later the kids realized they were supposed to pipe down, and then Betty simply put the book away and resumed driving.

Aunt Betty’s funeral was held at a Mennonite church in the small town of Sheridan, about 15 miles southwest of where I grew up. The low-angled winter sun was shining brightly on Friday morning as I drove south into the Willamette Valley from Portland. Aside from a grain elevator in the middle of town, the bell tower of the church seemed the tallest point in Sheridan.

Inside, the church was strikingly unadorned. There was no stained glass and no iconography, just wood walls painted white. How funny that I've become such a fan of Scandinavian design and its pristine unadorned manner, only to find something very similar here in the land of pickup trucks.

The funeral service included several songs by the church’s choir, billed in the program as the Sheridan Mennonite Mixed Octet. They sang numerous hymns—“Rock of Ages”, “Shall We Gather at the River”, “Amazing Grace”—without any organ or piano accompaniment. I really love both those instruments, but hearing these old prayer book standards a capella made them, at least for me, more compelling.

I’m not a churchgoer, and if I was shopping for a religion I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be Mennonite. (Although I must say I’m impressed by their commitment to nonviolence and pacifism. These days that kind of sentiment seems rare for such a rural, conservative people.) But I found their simplicity--in physical form and in their way of life--refreshing.

Afterward we gathered in the church basement for a simple lunch of potato cheese casserole, green beans, and bread & butter, with lemon meringue pie for dessert. Some members of the Mixed Octet did double duty in the kitchen. At one of the long tables, I talked with Betty and Bob’s son Arlan, my second cousin, who built from a tiny shack on the Lehman farm a motorcycle company that’s won over 40 international racing championships.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to Uncle Bob. He seemed to be valiantly fighting back tears before, during and after the ceremony. I just gave him a hug. Yet somehow the entire experience of driving down to Sheridan for Aunt Betty’s funeral was an inspiring one.

Sunday Night Dinner

Sunday evenings often bring a bittersweet mood. On one hand, there is a twinge of sadness because the weekend is coming to a close. Yet there's also the cumulative bliss of having had two days off for, ideally, more rest and free time and fun.

I often deliberate with myself about whether to make dinner on Sunday night, meaning a real entree versus, say, a sandwich or a slice of pizza. Sometimes I'm too lazy to make anything, but tonight both the process and the product felt particularly restorative.

I'd neglected to eat much of anything through the course of the day: just a slice of toast for breakfast and a couple glasses of V8 later on. (I regularly seem to all but fast for most of the day and then feast for dinner. I know it's not the healthiest way, but it usually works for me.) By the time the sun went down around 4:30, I felt almost weak from hunger.

So I unthawed a sizable cut of pork shoulder and began to sautee it in olive oil and sea salt over the stove. (I've found that pork shoulder is tastier than other cuts of pork even though it's sometimes considered inferior; which is great, though, because I can get it for $1.99 a pound.) First I seared the meat at high temperature, and then I turned the stove down so it would cook in the middle. Usually at this point one is instructed to move the frying pan from stovetop to oven, but I opted instead to just cover the pan. Before putting on the lid, I added sliced onions and garlic to the pan along with about half a cup each of red wine and turkey broth, the latter of which I'd made from the bones at Thanksgiving. This way, the meat was essentially braised, cooking in its juices and making an unbeatable topping once it came time for plating.

While the pork continued to cook, I started on a small batch of polenta on another burner. Sometimes it can be fairly labor intensive, because as it cooks you have to continually stir the mixture of polenta and water quite often as it thickens; you don't want it to burn or to turn into one big glob. But, as always, once the polenta has sufficiently cooked and you add a finishing nob of butter and parmesan cheese, the taste is divine--not strong in flavor, but rather a pleasingly bland yet rich sensation common to so many carbohydrate-laden staples like pasta and rice. It's precisely the kind of comfort food I wanted.

Had I been making a meal for other people beyond just myself, I would have made a salad and/or vegetable dish to go along with the pork and polenta. This time of year roasted root vegetables are always nice, but all our fridge yielded was carrots. Besides, I've always been a big lover of onions, and I was happy to make a side dish from the sliced onions that had braised in that delectable fusion of meat, garlic, wine and broth.

Despite how satiated I felt after the heavy meal, I hankered for a small taste of something sweet. Luckily earlier in the day I'd bought a bar of Lindt's dark Swiss chocolate. Over the past couple years I've rekindled a love of chocolate. But instead of eating a whole bar of ultra-sweet American style chocolate, as I might have done at a younger age, I'm happy now with just a few squares of European chocolate, where there is a more flavorful balance of sweet and bitter flavors.

I washed down the chocolate with a couple cups of decaf French roast coffee made in the French press from ground Stumptown coffee, the best in Portland. Sipping the coffee in a living room easy chair, listening to Sunday at the Village Vanguard by Bill Evans, I considered the prospect of starting another week with a full stomach and just a little less trepidation.