okieinexile
Well-Known Member
Noodles that bind
Or
Six noodles of separation
By Bobby Neal Winters
I found myself and my family at the chicken noodle dinner at the Frontenac United Methodist Church the other night. I must confess that when I envisioned this dinner it had consisted of a cup of noodles with a little chicken tossed in, a few crackers, and a spoon.
I am frequently wrong, but rarely am I so glad of it.
In Frontenac, they have taken chicken-and-noodles to its height as an entrée. The noodles are homemade, and the chickens have been fed only on honey-soaked cornbread and given only mead to drink. I might be making some of that up.
It was accompanied by what in the Okie language would be called dressing but more refined folks would refer to as stuffing. There was also green beans and pie. I had blackberry pie, but the gentleman across from me had found gooseberry pie. Fruit is good for you.
The gentleman and I began talking, and he mentioned his son-in-law. I recognized the last name and asked if he were related to the banker of the same name. It turned out they were brothers. I then replied his sister was my boss’s wife.
We had made a connection.
I’ve read that meeting a stranger and trying to make a connection through acquaintances and family is very ancient. Among the primitive tribes on Papua New Guinea, when strangers meet in the jungle, the first thing they do is to sit down and try to come up with some sort of familial connection so they don’t have to try to kill each other.
In Frontenac, this is done over noodles and nobody gets killed if a connection isn’t made. At least it hasn’t happened to me yet.
They—whoever they mean when they say “they”—say that there are at most six degrees of separation between any two people on the planet. What I mean by a degree of separation is this. There is one degree of separation between me and my wife. There are two degrees of separation between me and my wife’s second grade teacher whom I’ve never met, and so forth. There had been four degrees of separation between me and this fellow before we met, and now there is only one.
This six degrees of separation is a mathematical principal but it has never been proven. Those who’ve investigated the phenomenon say most people don’t have many connections, but there are some folks who just know lots of people, so if you were to want to make contact with a particular person in the African country of Mali, you would first want to approach one of these folks with lots of connections. They would know somebody who knew somebody who knows somebody else and so on.
At least that is the idea.
My Grampa Sam was one of those people who just seem to know everybody. He knew everybody from his close friend “Cuckleburr” Murray to United States Senator Robert S. Kerr.
Grampa’s way of making an acquaintance was to talk to them. I assume his approach varied depending upon his interests at the time, but when he was in his 70s he approached someone of an age similar to his and asked them, “Who many pills are you taking?”
They answered and so a conversation began and a connection formed.
Any politician worth his or her salt will seek folks like this out, and this probably explains how Grampa became acquainted with the good Senator Kerr. I can’t quite imagine even Grampa Sam going up to the man who’d obtained a seaport for Tulsa from that great barrel of pork in Washington, D.C. and asking him how many pills he took.
As much as we hear about the press, TV, mass mailings, and the Internet, there is absolutely no substitute for personal contact. The others have a place, but, when the rubber hits the road, the important stuff will happen over chicken-and-noodles in Frontenac, Kansas or over a Frito Pie in Stonewall, Oklahoma.
All I can say is “Thank God.”
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and lay speaker. You may contact him at bobby@okieinexile.com or visit his website at www.okieinexile.com.)
Or
Six noodles of separation
By Bobby Neal Winters
I found myself and my family at the chicken noodle dinner at the Frontenac United Methodist Church the other night. I must confess that when I envisioned this dinner it had consisted of a cup of noodles with a little chicken tossed in, a few crackers, and a spoon.
I am frequently wrong, but rarely am I so glad of it.
In Frontenac, they have taken chicken-and-noodles to its height as an entrée. The noodles are homemade, and the chickens have been fed only on honey-soaked cornbread and given only mead to drink. I might be making some of that up.
It was accompanied by what in the Okie language would be called dressing but more refined folks would refer to as stuffing. There was also green beans and pie. I had blackberry pie, but the gentleman across from me had found gooseberry pie. Fruit is good for you.
The gentleman and I began talking, and he mentioned his son-in-law. I recognized the last name and asked if he were related to the banker of the same name. It turned out they were brothers. I then replied his sister was my boss’s wife.
We had made a connection.
I’ve read that meeting a stranger and trying to make a connection through acquaintances and family is very ancient. Among the primitive tribes on Papua New Guinea, when strangers meet in the jungle, the first thing they do is to sit down and try to come up with some sort of familial connection so they don’t have to try to kill each other.
In Frontenac, this is done over noodles and nobody gets killed if a connection isn’t made. At least it hasn’t happened to me yet.
They—whoever they mean when they say “they”—say that there are at most six degrees of separation between any two people on the planet. What I mean by a degree of separation is this. There is one degree of separation between me and my wife. There are two degrees of separation between me and my wife’s second grade teacher whom I’ve never met, and so forth. There had been four degrees of separation between me and this fellow before we met, and now there is only one.
This six degrees of separation is a mathematical principal but it has never been proven. Those who’ve investigated the phenomenon say most people don’t have many connections, but there are some folks who just know lots of people, so if you were to want to make contact with a particular person in the African country of Mali, you would first want to approach one of these folks with lots of connections. They would know somebody who knew somebody who knows somebody else and so on.
At least that is the idea.
My Grampa Sam was one of those people who just seem to know everybody. He knew everybody from his close friend “Cuckleburr” Murray to United States Senator Robert S. Kerr.
Grampa’s way of making an acquaintance was to talk to them. I assume his approach varied depending upon his interests at the time, but when he was in his 70s he approached someone of an age similar to his and asked them, “Who many pills are you taking?”
They answered and so a conversation began and a connection formed.
Any politician worth his or her salt will seek folks like this out, and this probably explains how Grampa became acquainted with the good Senator Kerr. I can’t quite imagine even Grampa Sam going up to the man who’d obtained a seaport for Tulsa from that great barrel of pork in Washington, D.C. and asking him how many pills he took.
As much as we hear about the press, TV, mass mailings, and the Internet, there is absolutely no substitute for personal contact. The others have a place, but, when the rubber hits the road, the important stuff will happen over chicken-and-noodles in Frontenac, Kansas or over a Frito Pie in Stonewall, Oklahoma.
All I can say is “Thank God.”
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and lay speaker. You may contact him at bobby@okieinexile.com or visit his website at www.okieinexile.com.)
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