Of all the Jesus stories taught at St. Clement parochial school in Lansdowne when I was a kid, the one I never bought was the loaves and the fishes.
Walking on water — a solo act — seemed simple compared to the idea that seven loaves of bread and a couple of fish fed more than 5,000 people gathered to hear Christ.
In the past year, however, I have come to an understanding of the miracle, glimpsing it last week while passing through Kerrville, Texas, on a current Tinseltown to Crabtown road trip.
The public library in Kerrville, about 60 miles northwest of San Antonio, is a round, 1960s structure called Butt Holdsworth Memorial. A bench behind it overlooks the Guadalupe River and is shaded by an oak grown from an Alamo acorn planted by Lady Bird Johnson in 1967.
My version of the loaves and fishes began there with leftover salami, cheap Muenster cheese, a handful of dinner rolls, some Halloween chocolate and a 53-cent can of “California Girl” sardines in tomato sauce.
At the bench, I met a pair of dusty young drifters carrying skateboards, iPod earphones around their necks. They spied California plates, and one of them — a young Brit with a thick goatee — said the Golden State beckoned them for the winter.
“Going the other way,” I said, remembering a couple bottles of Fiji water in my cooler. Tossing them the water, I noticed the aforementioned sack of groceries and offered it as well. They were grateful, even for sardines trapped in an old-fashioned can.
“Ingenuity,” said the Englishman, pretending to get the fish with an imaginary opener, as his less-animated American sidekick dug into the rolls.
I left Kerrville having emptied my blue Rubbermaid cooler of everything but melted ice and regrets that I didn’t sit a spell with the wayfarers before shoving off for the Pelican State.
In Baton Rouge, I stayed with a reporter friend — Greg Garland of The Advocate — and slept in a bed for the first time in a week instead of the back of the truck.
Garland grilled fat cheeseburgers for dinner and served black maple ice cream for dessert. He wrapped up the leftover burgers along with tomato and lettuce for my cooler, which he also filled with ice, a few slices of pound cake and grape soda.
Not enough for 5,000 souls but enough, as I ate the burgers cold for breakfast the next morning, for me to remember the Gospel of Matthew and whisper “aha” between bites.
Rafael Alvarez can be reached at [email protected].
