The Finest of Wheat

I grind my own wheat and bake bread from it. Then I have one slice of that bread every morning. I have done so for 3 or 4 years now. I started when I developed arthritis so sudden and painful, inflaming my drawing hand, that I had to have my wedding rings cut off. A friend advised that if wheat is ground and then baked into bread within 24 hours, all the restorative, healing properties of the wheat are preserved. Since she was someone I trusted and did not consider loony, I followed her advice. The arthritis appears to have vanished and not returned. I order my wheat in bulk from a great lady out of Columbia, SC ( http://www.my-favoritethings.com/) . She sells all kinds of wonderful, healthy things. Why do I tell you this? Well, a few people wrote to me after my "Miracle Balls" healing joint pain advice. So many people hurt. They don't like that. So many health fixes cost a bundle. I am an expert at being a cheap-skate. I seek and find health fixes that avoid paying massive moola. I decided maybe I need to expand my readership by passing out health advice for the penny pincher. So that is my advice for today: grind your own wheat, bake your own bread, and if you want to do so with pain free joints, roll around on the $20 miracle balls I told you about yesterday. It won't heal all the world's ills, but it is not a bad start.

I headed out to interview my old WWII veteran friend Comer again yesterday. Again, he and Evelyn were feeling too poorly for a lunch out, but Comer was delighted to regale me with more WWII stories. In preparation, I had read a massive book on the Milne Bay battle. Comer had loaned it to me. He had also told me that there were no references in that book to his battalion, for which he was miffed. The book was written by an Australian, and the Australian infantry had fought the ground war that memorialized Milne Bay. But they couldn't have done it without the American airstrip gunners, and Comer felt they deserved a mention.

The book is enormous, and filled with technical, military language that makes it somewhat heavy reading. However, I had found several references to the American antiaircraft gunners, and even some personal anecdotes that sounded like the stories Comer had been telling me. So I opened our interview telling Comer, "I found many pages in this book that I think are about you."
"You did?!" he exclaimed, "Well to tell you the truth, I have never read it. I just skimmed it."
But his eyes lit up.
"What did they say?" he asked.
As I read to him, he sat very still, absorbing it, remembering it. I mentioned the first recorded "kill" or downing of a Japanese kamikaze plane at Milne Bay by a group of American gunners.
"That was me," he said, "Leastways they told me that I was officially the gun commander credited with the first kill."
I read to him the section that described that feat. I was surprised he had not mentioned that earlier in our sessions.
He went on to describe some brutal memories, and before I knew it, our time was up. I leaned back sighing as he sadly recounted a moment in the war he would clearly rather forget.
"I can't imagine my boys being able to do any of that," I said, "They have such gentle souls."
"I was mean, and tough," said Comer, "I had to be. Grew up in poverty, hard area. Small kid. Had to fight my way to success. You know I was a Golden Glove amateur boxer."
"I didn't know that."
"Yep, pretty good too on the amateur circuit. Won all my fights. Then they set me up to fight Gov. Wallace."
"THE Gov. Wallace?" I asked.
"Well he wasn't governor yet," said Comer, "And he was a good fighter. I declined. That's when I hung up my boxing gloves. I knew he was a better fighter than me. I decided then this was not the way I wanted my life to go. No, your boys might not have been suited to war. But me, I was mean and no one was going to tell me what to do."
I looked at him, trying to see past the kind old man I knew. I just could not picture him shooting anyone.
"Has your daughter heard any of these stories?" I asked.
"No, no one has heard these stories," he answered, "But I am ready to share them. I told my daughter to remember I was just a young man then. She and Evelyn weren't there yet."
I suspect he had wanted to hang up those wartime memories along with his boxing gloves, but then in the end, decided we needed to know. In some ways, I suspect sharing those secrets were healing his soul, like the finest of wheat had healed my arthritis.
"War is not pretty, is it?" I said.
"No, it is not," he said, glancing at a picture on his wall, snapped by a photographer at the front. It was the tense moment when the American gun crew was told to "fix bayonets; the enemy is a quarter mile away and coming."


Psalm 147:14
He grants peace to your borders
and satisfies you with the finest of wheat.

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