1971 was the year my sandwiches went from Wonderbread to whole wheat with wheatberries. From velvet dissolving in my mouth to gritty cardboard that needed to be chewed forever.
In ‘71, no one in my elementary school was eating PB & J on brown bread. Between bites I hid my sandwich under the lunchroom table.
In ‘71, my family moved in with strangers-people who grew pot on the windowsills, shared hot oil massages in the living room and danced around the kitchen to reggae while boiling lentils.
In ‘71 we shunned supermarkets. We bought groceries from the Unitarian Church weekly food co-op-even all-natural turkey and organic brown rice stuffing.
‘Do I haaave to?’ I whined more now that I lived with strangers and ate brown food.
‘Don’t you want to pay respect to Mother Earth? Do something symbolic with soil on this sacred day?’ Mom asked.
She was serious.
I was nine.
I shrugged and put my mittens on.
It was dusk and so cold you could see your breath. We stood over the frostbitten tomato plants in the garden. Mom read poetry by Native Americans. Dad tried to get a shovel into the frozen compost. (Something symbolic.) Each adult said why she was thankful. My sister rolled her eyes and stomped her feet to keep warm.
‘Didn’t Pilgrims kill Indians?’ I whispered to her.
‘Yeah, Pilgrims were jerks,’ she whispered back. She was eleven, knew more and was much cooler than I.
‘Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving if Pilgrims were jerks?’ I asked. All the adults looked at me.
‘I can’t feel my face,’ my sister said. ‘I’m going inside.’
We all followed, except Dad, determined to get his shovelful.
The mashed potatoes had brown worms mixed in. Or maybe they were just the skins.
‘Most nutritious part,’ Mom said.
‘High in vitamin A,’ said Dad. ‘I think it’s D,’ she corrected. Somebody lit a joint.
I poked a drumstick with my fork. I’d seen a turkey farm on TV that morning. So many birds, all dead now. I thought about becoming the youngest vegetarian in America.
‘Eat your salad,’ Dad said.
It was covered with tofu-tamari dressing. Brown liquid with white clumps, clinging to green leaves. I shook my head no.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
I bit into the cranberry sauce. My face puckered. Saliva rushed to my mouth.
‘Sugar’s bad for you,’ a man from the commune said when I spit it out.
‘I know,’ I retorted and grabbed some pie to save my palate: bland and thick with pumpkin strings.
‘I made that too,’ he said.
Dishes piled, oil heating on the stove, the adults retreated to the living room.
‘Oops, nature calls,’ a woman of the commune said. She rose from the pillows, skipped past the bathroom and out the rear door into the wooded backyard.
I was so glad I hadn’t invited any friends over that year.
The next school day at lunchtime I peeked under the table into my sandwich baggie.
Dead bird.
My stomach growled, but I still couldn’t do it.
In 1971, the youngest vegetarian in America decided brown bread with just ketchup wasn’t so bad.