Chapter 23 Vegetarians

Colin was something of a health nut. We made our own yogurt using a culture he had obtained from friends. We grew our own sprouts–mostly alfalfa and mung beans–but occasionally we’d try lentils or some other vegetable Colin had heard about. He bought a Champion juicer and we experimented with all sorts of vegetable and fruit combinations. The juicing and yogurt making lasted for a few weeks respectively. The sprout-making we did off and on the whole time I lived with him.

I had grown up vegetarian, which in the sixties in Memphis, made me a real curiosity. Little purple people from Mars would have elicited less notice. Sometimes when people learned I was a vegetarian they would want to feel my arms to see if there was really anything substantial in them.

In tenth grade, our class took a trip to Big Bend National Park in Texas. Somewhere along the way we stopped by a huge sand dune to play. We ran up and down for several hours. That night around the campfire one of the men who had known our family for decades came over to me. “Well, Johnny, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. I didn’t think vegetarians could go all day like that. You were running up and down that dune like a mountain goat. I thought you had to have meat to build muscles like that.”

But vegetarianism in our home meant the standard American menu–something brown (meat), something white (potatoes) and something with color (vegetables). As vegetarians, the “brown” was fake meat instead of real meat–“steaks,” “nuggets” or patties made variously from wheat gluten, soy or peanuts. Mother also made “roasts,” combinations of grains, nuts and vegetables that were supposed to resemble meat loaf. The variety in our meals came from the vegetables–broccoli, asparagus, beets, okra, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, cabbage, “green English peas” (I hated peas), black eyed peas, crowder peas, string beans, eggplant, (another one I hated), turnip greens (yuk!), mustard greens, artichokes, purple hull beans, corn, yellow crook neck squash, spinach, carrots. Sometimes we had spaghetti and fake meat balls. My number one, all-time-favorite supper was macaroni and cheese, fried Choplets, and broccoli. (Choplets was the brand name a kind of gluten steaks.)

Following Colin around to vegetarian conferences and health fairs I was exposed to a whole new universe of vegetarianism. I met vegans and raw food enthusiasts. Of course, in New York City I experienced cuisine from cultures that had never built their meals on steak and potatoes.