Storm relief should include cooking

Driving down U.S. Highway 441 toward Orlando was not just the usual nuisance over the weekend, it was a guilt trip.

We didn’t get touched by the hurricane out my way, while friends who work one desk away from me got hammered. It’s like the school bus crashed and your kids were the only ones who came out unscratched. You feel lucky, but you can’t feel good.

It was eerie, and in at least one unexpected way enlightening. Charley helped me understand something that had always struck me as curious about people from, of all places, the rural Tennessee of my childhood.

We didn’t have hurricanes, but we had plenty of other tragedies. And anywhere you have somebody hurting you have people standing around unhurt, wishing they could do something to help.

They didn’t stand around long back home. The reaction to any and all serious misfortune, from layoffs to fatalities, was immediate and universal.

Everybody cooked.

If you were awakened at 3:30 a.m. by pots and pans rattling you knew there had been a wreck on the highway, an accident at the quarry or bad news from the hospital. If you could smell ham baking at 5 a.m., it was a pretty sure bet there was a funeral in your near future.

There was even a protocol. You had corn bread kin -- great aunts, rarely seen cousins and uncles who lived way over in Harriman and never came around. Fried-chicken relatives were closer to home. A side dish was appropriate for a neighbor you didn’t really get along with or somebody who somehow “had it coming.” If you got killed on a motorcycle or while dancing with the wrong man’s wife, the best your family could hope for was green beans.

A pan of biscuits was the culinary equivalent of signing the guest register.

It was a nice tradition, but never really a practical one. When you’ve got Aunt Effie laid out in the parlor, the last thing you need is a front room full of pinto beans and fried okra. There was always too much. As kids we wondered why everybody bothered.

Sunday morning it became a little clearer to me.

I walked around all day Saturday with my hands in my pockets while my wife, Laurie, tried to call people in Orlando.

Everybody we reached said everything was OK, then went on to tell us why it really wasn’t. Trees were down. No power. Screen rooms gone. No ice. No gas.

To a person, they said “there’s nothing you can do.” To a person, they were wrong.

We could cook.

I baked a ham. Laurie made potato salad, throwing cardiovascular caution to the wind and using my mother’s recipe, somewhere nutritionally between real mayonnaise and bacon drippings. I shucked and boiled corn and delivered the whole mess.

It wasn’t a lot and it probably didn’t make much difference to the recipients. But that’s OK, because it made my day and somewhere in the middle of the morning I started to see the reason for all that funeral cooking.

It wasn’t about Aunt Effie and it wasn’t about food. It was about doing something. People went to the kitchen because the only other option was to go back to bed and feel helpless. Anything is better than that.

This is where all the relief coordinators miss the boat when they tell us the best thing we can do to help is to send a check. That’s only about half right.

If I had sent $18.88 to the Red Cross instead of spending it on a ham, more overall benefit would’ve come of it, no doubt. Instead of cooking for four hours, I could’ve written a check in four seconds and, according to the officials, everybody would be better off.

They’re just as wrong as the people who said there was nothing I could do. I wouldn’t have been better off and I ought to count for something. A check is a good thing, but it’s not the best thing because there’s no heart in it. And that ought to count for something, too.

Just once after a flood, earthquake, hurricane, forest fire or mudslide, I’d like to see a governor address this issue. He could step out of his helicopter and read the standard statement saying federal disaster aid is on the way, please obey all rules, stay calm and give generously to your favorite relief organization.

And then he could fold his notes up and add, “and if you really want to be useful, fix somebody a pot roast.”

Then we could all start healing.

Jake Vest can be reached at jvest@orlandosentinel.com or call 1-800-347-6868, Ext. 5689, and leave a message