God Sent Us an Angel

God sent us an angel. That’s what the preacher’s wife told me when I saw her today. Yesterday, she had been sitting at a makeshift table wondering how she was going to get the zip codes to mail business announcements to the hospital at Ft. Sill. I overheard her and volunteered to deliver her menus to a contact at the military base.

She was grateful for my offer and seemed eager to hear more, so I found myself making suggestions that ranged from ambience, to color palette, to lessons in product consistency, gleaned from my avocation as an East Coast foodie who is passionate about flavors, tables, and presentations. This new business run by a preacher and his wife has some of the best pit barbecue in Texoma—the southwest Oklahoma-north Texas region—that I had ever tasted. During family get-togethers, the mesquite-smoked meats—beef, pork, chicken, and seafood—had been perfected, and now the entire clan was working together to try to make a success of it. 

I placed a second take-out order, and then went home to spread the word about my new find. I e-mailed 50 friends and neighbors affiliated with the media, hospitals, schools, major car dealerships, real estate, and construction, including the owner and anchor of the ABC television affiliate. I hand-delivered a dozen menus. Even then I couldn’t stop; I wrote a testimonial the Atkinsons could copy to place in their restaurant and use when soliciting catering jobs.

Today, I returned and saw how quickly the family had implemented my suggestions. Annette informed me that new faces had shown up during lunchtime. At a family powwow a few nights previously, they had discussed buying a television for customers to watch while waiting for their food; so it had surprised them when I presented the idea of making the small restaurant a place where customers could linger, by putting up a television and adding a family portrait of their clan at home enjoying barbecue. I told them not to slather the meat in sauce, but to offer sauce on the side, or to cover only the bottom half of the meat. “Customers want to taste the mesquite smoke, not cover its pungency.”

“When you see young soldiers start to come in, that’s a sign that you need to have more chicken wings on the menu.” I told them. “People like chicken wings, and young soldiers either don’t like to or can’t cook. They’ll come back if your place feels like home.”

I was acquainted with young adults like these who had already been sent to Iraq and were being shipped out for their second tour. They were barely out of their teens and many were away from home for the first time in their lives, so cooking is the last thing on their collective minds.

It made me angry to hear of John Kerry’s botched comments directed at George Bush, “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.” Despite their youth, these soldiers impressed me with their precocious maturity, their sense of responsibility and discipline. One veteran was a young woman, sent to Iraq as a nurse; she looked like she could have been a student in high school or college. High school students playing dress up as soldiers. Only, this is their reality.

I heard her voice continue, “You are an angel. We were talking about how God sent us an angel to help when you began giving us all this advice.” I smiled. I, too, had felt an unseen hand in this affair. There I was waiting for my food order, when the sight of a motherly black woman worrying out loud in these tough economic times touched my heart.

“My husband Richard, he told me just be patient…God will provide. Then you appeared.” I had sensed her distress. Otherwise, I might have just picked up my food and gone on my way. But God gives each and every one of us a gift of humanity, and mine is empathy. I couldn’t turn away.

I gave the preacher’s wife my personal e-mail address and told her she could contact me if needed. For sure, my family will hire them to cater our next function. Last week, my sister and her husband hosted a dinner for my brother-in-law, himself a veteran of the war in Iraq. If I had known of the Atkinsons’ bbq business beforehand, we would have hired them and promoted their food to all in attendance. That was a missed opportunity. But something tells me the family won’t need my help much longer…their work ethic and the quality of their food are already there. The word-of-mouth groundswell I set in motion has begun and now, customers just need to find them.