Opa the Bread Thrower
The very earliest memories I have of bread involves my maternal grandfather. He was a big influence on my life despite the fact that he and I spoke different languages. He spoke German and I spoke English but that hardly seemed to matter. He communicated through body language, inflection of voice and very animated gesturing. He spoke with authority and this somehow went beyond language. He would speak to me in German as if I understood, therefore, in some strange way, forcing me to understand. He did not dumb things down for me. He spoke to me as an adult in a foreign language.
Just like me, my grandfather was a walking freak. He owned no vehicle and walked everywhere. He lived in the old historic district of Heidelberg, Germany. I lived four out of the first five years of my life in Germany and most of the few memories of have retained of that early stage of life involve my grandfather.
I consider myself lucky to have lived a portion of my youth in a foreign country. But I think I was even luckier to be able to later spend an entire summer of my teenage years in Europe. I think every American teenager should spend an entire summer on some other continent. I feel that cultural diversity is something every child would benefit from experiencing.
As a small child I remember walking hand-in-hand with my grandpa over the dusty centuries-old cobblestone streets to the neighborhood bakery. He never had to place his order once inside because they always knew exactly what he wanted. He always came for a loaf of rye bread.
Walking home to my grandfather’s apartment, he let me carry the loaf of bread. It was like carrying a small goat. At least to a five-year-old. like me, it was. It was huge. It was around two feet long and a foot wide.
As a teenager, I got to go on the very same walk to the very same bakery to get the very same loaf of rye bread in the very same neighborhood of the same historic European city with my grandpa as I did a decade before. How freaking lucky am I?
As a teenager I got to sit at a lunch table in my grandparent’s old apartment in a centuries-old building in Heidelberg with six to ten other humans. My grandfather would pull out his magic bread-slicing knife. He would then put the giant loaf of rye bread under his left arm as though it were some barnyard critter. With the knife in his right hand he commenced to cut slices of bread that were nothing short of geometrically perfect. No machine could slice bread that perfectly. That is how I remember it, anyhow.
In the middle of the table were plates of cold cuts, vegetables, and condiments. Everyone had an empty plate. As my grandfather began carving slices of rye bread everyone would hold up their plate. Finishing a slice, my grandfather would then throw the slice through the air onto one of the many upheld plates. It was an honor to receive the first slice of bread.
“Opa,” as we called him, kept slicing the bread with an uncanny accuracy and every new slice he would throw wildly through the air to land perfectly on someone’s plate. He was a spectacle to behold. He was an artist. He was a culinary athlete — if such a term exists. As a teenager, I kept thinking that one of these days he would miss a plate, sending a slice of rye bread falling to the floor. But he never missed. (Of course, the plate-holders assumed some responsibility.) It was a bizarre performance in which I feel extremely lucky to have been in the audience of.
That rye bread that my grandfather sliced and threw acrobatically through the air just happens to be my favorite bread of all time. I have never found any rye bread that comes close…….
Or any bread.
There is a bakery just two and a half blocks from where I currently live here in America. Just like my grandfather a half century ago, I walk to the bakery to get bread. They claim to make rye bread. But it is nothing at all like what my grandpa threw. It does not look like it or taste like it and it comes pre-sliced. It is just not the same.
Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.
Just like me, my grandfather was a walking freak. He owned no vehicle and walked everywhere. He lived in the old historic district of Heidelberg, Germany. I lived four out of the first five years of my life in Germany and most of the few memories of have retained of that early stage of life involve my grandfather.
I consider myself lucky to have lived a portion of my youth in a foreign country. But I think I was even luckier to be able to later spend an entire summer of my teenage years in Europe. I think every American teenager should spend an entire summer on some other continent. I feel that cultural diversity is something every child would benefit from experiencing.
As a small child I remember walking hand-in-hand with my grandpa over the dusty centuries-old cobblestone streets to the neighborhood bakery. He never had to place his order once inside because they always knew exactly what he wanted. He always came for a loaf of rye bread.
Walking home to my grandfather’s apartment, he let me carry the loaf of bread. It was like carrying a small goat. At least to a five-year-old. like me, it was. It was huge. It was around two feet long and a foot wide.
As a teenager, I got to go on the very same walk to the very same bakery to get the very same loaf of rye bread in the very same neighborhood of the same historic European city with my grandpa as I did a decade before. How freaking lucky am I?
As a teenager I got to sit at a lunch table in my grandparent’s old apartment in a centuries-old building in Heidelberg with six to ten other humans. My grandfather would pull out his magic bread-slicing knife. He would then put the giant loaf of rye bread under his left arm as though it were some barnyard critter. With the knife in his right hand he commenced to cut slices of bread that were nothing short of geometrically perfect. No machine could slice bread that perfectly. That is how I remember it, anyhow.
In the middle of the table were plates of cold cuts, vegetables, and condiments. Everyone had an empty plate. As my grandfather began carving slices of rye bread everyone would hold up their plate. Finishing a slice, my grandfather would then throw the slice through the air onto one of the many upheld plates. It was an honor to receive the first slice of bread.
“Opa,” as we called him, kept slicing the bread with an uncanny accuracy and every new slice he would throw wildly through the air to land perfectly on someone’s plate. He was a spectacle to behold. He was an artist. He was a culinary athlete — if such a term exists. As a teenager, I kept thinking that one of these days he would miss a plate, sending a slice of rye bread falling to the floor. But he never missed. (Of course, the plate-holders assumed some responsibility.) It was a bizarre performance in which I feel extremely lucky to have been in the audience of.
That rye bread that my grandfather sliced and threw acrobatically through the air just happens to be my favorite bread of all time. I have never found any rye bread that comes close…….
Or any bread.
There is a bakery just two and a half blocks from where I currently live here in America. Just like my grandfather a half century ago, I walk to the bakery to get bread. They claim to make rye bread. But it is nothing at all like what my grandpa threw. It does not look like it or taste like it and it comes pre-sliced. It is just not the same.
Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.