Hoppin’ John, also known as Carolina peas and rice, is a peas and rice dish served in the Southern United States. It is made with cowpeas and rice, chopped onion, and sliced bacon, seasoned with salt. Some recipes use ham hock, fatback, country sausage, or smoked turkey parts instead of bacon. Hoppin’ John is one of those classic Southern dishes that come with as many versions, stories, and flavors as there are cooks. At its core, however, Hoppin’ John is rice, black-eyed peas (or field peas), smoked pork, and onions.

The strange thing about Hoppin’ John is that I was raised in the South. Born there, lived there until I was 12, and the first time I ever heard of it was last year when my neighbors, Jim and Lorie, brought over a nice, big dish of it for New Year’s Day. I let it sit in my refrigerator for a day or two, eyeing it suspiciously (black-eyed peas have never been a big favorite of mine) until on the third day I warmed it up and tried it. Very good!

What made me think about it again was that this year at my new church, someone made a big casserole dish of it for our church New Year’s lunch. Libby, the originator of the dish for this year, went about asking if anyone wanted to take it home. I volunteered and found it again to my liking. In the little town of West Fairview, tucked between the Susquehanna River and the Enola freight yards, every year the town would have a pork and sauerkraut dinner. The tradition, and the now-classic food pairing, can trace its origins back to Germany. Germans and other pig-raising cultures have been eating these dishes for centuries, with immigrants bringing the tradition to the United States in the 17th and 18th centuries. People of Czech, Hungarian, and Polish ancestry enjoy the food pairing as well. That’s why this tradition is concentrated in areas with higher populations of these cultures, like the Midwest and Pennsylvania Dutch country. For thirty-four years, until I moved to Virginia to remarry, I looked forward to that New Year’s Day meal. There was so much that we were encouraged to take large plates of leftovers home with us. It was pork and sauerkraut for the next week after that, meals that we were happy to have as we were quite poor as a young couple.

In two months, I will be seventy-four. It feels somewhat strange to say that. I don’t feel like I’m seventy-four. I feel more like I am still thirty, and my mind goes along with the joke, until my body wakes up the next day after a vigorous round of softball or weightlifting and says “See? You ain’t a kid no more!” But I am blessed to be this old. As I recounted in another blog piece, I did a lot of stupid things when I was young that more than once almost killed me. Add to that the drugs I took, and other acts of self-inflicted insanity, and I will tell you again – I am very blessed to have reached this age.

Having reached this age is strange in a lot of ways. There are so many memories. My mind is a great big book of remembrances of things done, places visited, joys and sorrows, and a hundred more besides. Some things I wish I could do again – fishing with my children, swimming in the creek near our house while they caught crawfish. Going on train rides. Good memories. I hope these are things that they will remember as the good part about me. I took a job that had me away from home a lot. Wish I hadn’t done that.

I spent a few days between Christmas and New Year’s with my daughter Julie and Reese, the latest grandchild. If you remember a piece I wrote a couple of years ago, this is the daughter who swore she was not going to have children. Now she dotes on the little guy and wishes she could have more children. Along with my oldest son, Jason, we went to a Hershey Bears hockey game and Julie showed me the place where she works – the Hershey Hotel, which is a really posh place. She’s a hairdresser in the spa at the hotel and she loves working for the Hershey Corporation. The perks are great. We got $75 tickets to the hockey game for $20 each and she gets reduced admission to Hershey Park.

2022 was an interesting year, with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. I finally wound up in the Orthodox Church, something that had been on my mind for a few years. There were just things in Catholicism with which I did not agree. The whole journey was pretty amazing. When I first suggested Orthodoxy to my wife, a devout Catholic, she hit the ceiling – loudly! All she had to know was that Orthodoxy is not under the jurisdiction or in communion with the pope of Rome and that was that for her! That was four years ago, right about the time that the Covid scamdemic started. So, I let it sit. But it nagged in my mind.

One day I was reading about Orthodox saints of Mount Athos and I came across St. Paisios. “Why not pray to St. Paisios and ask him to help me get into the Church?” I thought. And voila – here I am. And the amazing thing, which I totally attribute to St. Paisios, is that Elizabeth is not upset. She has completely accepted that I am now Orthodox and also that I go to church a lot. I try to make all the services, not because I’m holy, but because I’m a Pharisee who needs the prayers and Sacraments of the Church for spiritual healing.

I have no idea what is coming in 2023. I have plans, but so does God, and a lot of times, my plans are not His for me. But I have no complaints. I have often in prayer thanked God for fifty extra years of life which I did not deserve. It has been quite a journey.

So, no theological musings this morning. Just reflecting on my life as the sun has made yet another revolution around the earth on which I have been blessed to live for seventy-four years!