Unbounded Giving: A Landmark in the Evolution of Brotherly Love?
By Jere W. Clark
Introduction: I was truly blessed to have the parents that I did—I still benefit daily from their principles and advice. And I’m lucky that, while they are both gone now, I have tons of letters and other writings from both of them that keep their spirit—and, often, sense of humor alive and well.
What follows is a tale my dad loved to tell about an incident when he was a teenager. He wrote it up for a family reunion of his siblings and kin. He and Mom weren’t able to attend, so he sent this along as “participation by remote control”—long before Zoom meetings were anybody’s vision of the future.
His explanation:
My hope is that this report on this unforgettable effort to breathe life into the quality of giving may be made available not only to the younger generations of the Clark clan, but also to any and all members of the human race who aspire to help perfect the art of brotherly generosity.
Stafford and Jere
Imagine two hungry, teenage brothers giving all of a special treat they had laboriously prepared for themselves to two of their brothers who appeared to be in great need, and you get a preliminary glimpse of the unfathomable dimensions of the great act of sharing to be sketched herein.
My acute sense of modesty prevents me from claiming that this act of unbounded giving is a landmark in the evolution of brotherly love. What I shall do is give you the facts and raise a few leading questions about this historic event and let you be the judge!
It was one hot summer evening at the old home place near Rex. Joseph and Merrill had left home that Saturday evening seeking some girls to take out on a date. Since the rest of the family was away this seemed to Stafford and me to be the ideal time to realize our long-standing dream of making and eating all the homemade ice cream we could eat without interference from anyone else.
Once Joe and Merrill had gone, Stafford and I gathered together the very best combination of the very best materials we could find to make the six-quart family freezer full of ice cream. No effort was spared to make this the very best ice cream ever made.
Just as we were completing the churning of the cream, guess who suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the scent! You guessed it—Joe and Merrill, without any dates.
Imagine mine and Stafford’s dilemma as to what to do. Of course we ordinarily would want to share this great cream with our brothers. But this was no ordinary situation. We had waited long and worked hard for this moment. To have shared it with them would mean only three pints each—not enough for anyone. Nevertheless, when we studied the facial expressions of Joe and Merrill we could see with our very eyes that the impression of failure loomed large in the minds of these dear brothers. You see, they had been driving around over Henry County looking for girls to date that evening and not a single girl went out with them. Since there were dozens of eligible girls in the county, that mean dozens of failures on their part. Where would Joe and Merrilee be today if they were still hooked on failure of such a grandiose scale? They appeared to need, more than anything else, a quick success on a large scale.
As Stafford and I pondered what to do we tested the ice cream to be sure it as really good as we had expected it to be. Had it been only the usual quality ice cream Joe and Merrill might not think it was a big success in getting to share it. We knew how adding a pinch of salt to something sweet like that sometimes makes it taste not only sweeter, but also richer.
The question was, was enough salt added to make this the most unforgettable ice cream Joe and Merrill had ever tasted?
In all modesty, I should add that nature helped Stafford and me along in this quest for enough salt. A quick taste confirmed that the cream did, in fact, have enough salt to make this an unforgettable dish! The churn had developed a leak so that some of the salt used to melt the ice and freeze the cream had come to our rescue!!!
Therefore we did not stop at sharing this cream with Joe and Merrill. We actually let them have all of it!!!!!!!!
So modest are we, we are not going even to ask Joe or Merrill if realizing this unexpected success had anything to do with their later success in landing such wonderful wives!!!!!