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May Merriment: Three Slices of Happiness
On the way to more serious content, I ran across three very different but equally, quietly, joyful YouTube videos. Enjoy three great slices of Americana:
- A woman making cheeseburger pie, with camera work by her husband of many years.
- A woman and her heavy Chevy.
- The ice cream man and the truly diverse community he serves.
The cooking video is one of a series, shot in a couple’s kitchen. To be completely accurate, it is clearly the woman’s kitchen, and her husband is there in support and in appreciation of her cooking. How could you not like Mae Mae’s Happy Table? You will surely gain five pounds just watching, but the video is worth the weight.
The video of a woman and her car is professionally shot by a local media outlet. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter and camera team stay out of the way, keeping the focus on this woman who bought her 1957 Chevy at the end of the model year and has driven it ever since. Grace Braeger likes her car, takes great care and pride in ownership, and so has never seen the need to buy another make or model. Your mileage may vary, but I quite enjoyed this glimpse into someone’s life.
Finally, as the weather turns warm, the New York Times is to be commended for making and publishing a video against their political interest. Enjoy this long-term true small businessman, and his decades of serving soft-serve cones in various flavors, with all sorts of mouthwatering decorative toppings. Watch the simple joy Godfrey Robinson brings to young and older alike. It is almost heartbreaking, but hopeful, to hear a woman say it is such a relief to hear the ice cream truck music instead of sirens.
Many years back, Edith Shaeffer, wife of Francis Schaeffer, wrote Hidden Art, in defense of creating beauty in the everyday, and against claims of Art as something requiring special expertise to create and to properly appreciate. Mae Mae and her husband are sharing hidden art. The interaction between Grace Braeger and the moving sculpture of a 1957 Chevy is better performance art than most of what gets funded by various arts councils, from local to national. The visual and sound artistry by the Times team tells the story true, without getting in the way of the double scoop of edible beauty served up by Godfrey Robinson. Your mileage may vary, but these three tasty videos surely hit the spot.
Published in Group Writing
OMG MY dad used to have that exact car, but in turquoise (a very hot color in the 1950s).
“Three slices of happiness” – I thought the post would be about the Cheesecake Factory assortment Mrs. Tabby got for me for my birthday this week. :-)
The perfect dessert to go with your cheeseburger pie!
I have seen that color. The car itself is just the right proportions, I think, not going to extremes. It is so distinct, unlike so many “soap bar” cars in the era of mandatory fleet fuel efficiency standards.
Ditto on the turquoise. Yet my dad’s was a straight 6 with “3 on the tree” manual transmission.
Watched with the captions: “I’m going to be doing a cheese bird of path”
I could tell her accent right away.
Oh my goodness! Mae Mae is bringing it with the taste of home for me. Checking this out in the morning on a “fasting day” is torturous! I looked at her channel and I swear nearly every recipe represented has been on the table at one of our (now infrequent) family reunions at the church fellowship hall. I am so glad Ms. Mae Mae has created these videos – what a wonderful way to pass on good home cooking to the younger YouTubers who only know how to navigate a drive-thru or an UberEats app. I’ll be making some of these on a “feasting day”! Thank you for the inspiration.
I thought she sounds a lot like my mother, especially getting into visiting places she never needs to go again.
I think I’m with her on not needing to drive on a thin concrete ribbon over miles of water.