Our vacation, wonderfully, has begun. I don’t want to paint a picture of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I was born, as some sort of Paradise (actually, Paradise is down Route 743 with Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse and the like).

Here's Deb, my wife, me, my dad and my sister Laurie in front of my dad's garden.

Since my youth (which was not exactly halcyon either), Lancaster has considerably less fields and farms, replaced by ubiquitous brand name stores, that make some new places feel familiar which aren’t. It seems there is a shooting everyday now in the city in whose schools I first taught 30 years ago this September. All the town is talking about a vandal who is throwing acid on cars, causing $400,000 damage so far and who remains unapprehended. Yet, there is much that is bright about Lancaster, beyond its genuinely friendly sales people and head covering clad Mennonite Maids. I’ve always enjoyed going to breakfast with my dad’s group of friends, people I remember from when he used to work at Alcoa (the plant long since closed down and replace by a Barnes and Nobles and a plethora of other trademark stores). Work friends for life, the group of them meeting almost every day somewhere for breakfast, waitresses who know them and their orders by name, and dish back the “hard time” these 80+ year old men give them.

And the restaurants with fresh made lemon meringue pie and shoo fly pie, where the principal sauce is the Lancaster County staple, gravy and more gravy. Thursday night, with Deb’s Dad at the Lititz Family Restaurant, I had something I’d not had in over 25 years, pigs stomach, or as my grandmother (“Ma”) who made it called it, “Hog Ma.” Some blend of sausage plus celery, onions, and potatoes all cooked in a, yes, it’s true, a pig’s stomach casing from the butcher. It’s remarkable how tastes and smells flood in memories from the past. My young man’s work of becoming independent is now past and I’ve had many opportunities to remember God’s kindness to me in giving me the parents he has, parents no more perfect than I was. Maybe better. Doing the best they had with the light they had. We ran across a box of papers in cleaning out the attic at my dad’s, papers that included a Shirley Temple coloring book from 1935 which had belonged to my mom (I'm glad to say that my Mom colored within the lines). Here also is the program from her 1942 Commencement, where she was valedictorian. We read a bit from a diary of hers. Fascinating to see that almost every night was spent at church with friends. Yes, Wrightsville, PA, on the side of the Susquehanna from Columbia, was never a large town, yet likely all small towns were like this, apart from the occasional dance. After some thinking and reading the box, we figured out the use of a metal “bracelet” that went over a child’s elbow, so it couldn’t be bent, but stopped the “nasty habit” of thumb sucking and which looked like some medieval torture device. Ah, our society’s techniques of child rearing. All of which, at the time, seemed sensible and caring, but in the light of time, show up as fads.

But back to the restaurants. At the Country Table in Mount Joy, we had a wonderful meal, but I was once again reminded of how different Lancaster County is. At this popular local place (come early if you don’t want to wait in line—it’s always been packed when we were there), the little carousel on the table that tells about specials (August was peach dessert month) also has the following story called "The Lord's Baseball Game."

THE LORD'S BASEBALL GAME

Freddy and the Lord stood by to observe a baseball game. The Lord's team was playing Satan's team.

The Lord's team was at bat, the score was tied zero to zero, and it was the bottom of the 9th inning with two outs. They continued to watch as a batter stepped up to the plate named 'Love.'

Love swung at the first pitch and hit a single, because "Love never fails."

The next batter was named Faith, who also got a single because Faithworks with Love.

The next batter up was named Godly Wisdom. Satan wound up and threw the first pitch.

Godly Wisdom looked it over and let it pass: Ball one. Three more pitches and Godly Wisdom walked because he never swings at what Satan throws.

The bases were now loaded. The Lord then turned to Freddy and told him He was now
going to bring in His star player. Up to the plate stepped Grace. Freddy said, "He sure doesn't look like much!"

Satan's whole team relaxed when they saw Grace.
Thinking he had won the game, Satan wound up and fired his first pitch. To the shock of everyone, Grace hit the ball harder than anyone had ever seen! But Satan was not worried; his center fielder let very few get by.


He went up for the ball, but it went right through his glove, hit him on the head and sent him crashing on the ground;
the roaring crowds went wild as the ball
continued over the fence . . . for a home run!

The Lord then asked Freddy if he knew why Love, Faith and Godly Wisdom could get on base but couldn't win the game. Freddy answered that he didn't know why.

The Lord explained, "If your love, faith and wisdom had won the game, you would think you had done it by yourself. Love, Faith and Wisdom will get you on base but only My Grace can get you Home:


'For by Grace are you saved, it is a gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephestians 2:8-9

Now, regardless of what you think of the theology, what is remarkable is that this is found on a restaurant dessert menu and no one thinks anything of it. No one complains or sues. Or take this picture of a wall hanging for sale in the restaurant we Lancastrians always drove by or stopped at on the way to the Jersey shore, the Gap Diner:

I don’t know if it’s because we don’t go out to enough restaurants in Massachusetts; maybe this is what you find in restaurants at home. But then, I must be quick to point out that restaurants in Lancaster county have some other things those in Massachusetts don't. Yes, with your cholesterol free eggs you can have scrapple. Now, wikipedia defines scrapple as "a savory mush in which cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour, are simmered with pork scraps and trimmings, then formed into a loaf. Small scraps of meat left over from butchering, too small to be used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste." You don't want to think about that too long, but it's quite popular down here . . . His and yours, Steve and Deb on vacation in some places that most definitely are not Massachusetts.