A PLEA FOR KASHRUT IN THE HINTERLANDS

In 1990, I moved back to Atlanta to care for my parents. I did my best to eke out a living by writing. Nothing creative, just advertising, technical articles, collection letters.

A successful businessman from rural Toccoa utilized my services. He had the intelligence of a one-eyed donkey. My writing made him look so good that he invited me to work for him.

Toccoa was inhabited by yokels who were largely illiterate and had few aspirations. Their idea of a good time was to get drunk and get into fights. They had never seen a Jewish face in Toccoa until I arrived. My boss was so proud that he told everyone I was a rabbi.

I don’t know what people said behind my back, but they seemed to respect me. I got along quite well with the employees of my own company, because I was the only halfway intelligent, compassionate one to whom they could talk. They were adherents of fundamentalist Christianity, and knew nothing about Judaism. The gap would have been disturbing had it not been so comical:

One day, the girls were having an argument about some point of religion. As I walked in, they were jubilant. “Ask Marc,” one said. “After all, he’s a Jesuit!”

The operations manager, a college graduate, once announced that he had recently had “Marc’s people’s soup.” Ah, it must have been matzo ball, I thought. He continued, “I believe it’s called pasta fazool!”

Then came the party celebrating my engagement to Linda, a covered-dish dinner. I informed the host that we ate no meat, poultry, nor shellfish. We figured that we would unobtrusively eat the side dishes.

The message obviously did not get through. The entrée was pork roast. The salad was topped with bacon. The pasta was mixed with shrimp. The beans were cooked in fatback. The pie was mincemeat.

Linda and I must have seemed terribly rude.

They presented us their gift, a collection of $25. Ashamed, we offered our thanks and left shortly thereafter. As soon as we were out of range, I announced to Linda, “Let’s hold off our hunger just a little while. Now we have just enough money to buy a kosher pizza when we get back to Atlanta.”