THE BEAN AGE DAYS

Editor's note: As I was chowing down a can of Campbell's Bean with Bacon soup at home alone on one of the days my husband Jack was in the hospital after slipping on the ice and fracturing his ankle, this poem came to mind. My love of bean soup, I'm sure, came from Dad! I rarely make it, though, since our son-in-law Jerry is the only member of our family who will touch it (I always said he has good taste)!

Any time I sit and ponder,
My thoughts are sure to wander
To those times away back yonder,
That I call the bean age days;
When I was but a youngster,
And later, in my teens,
I often ate for dinner
Very little more than beans.

Of course, we had a measure
Of happy wiles and pleasure,
And memories to treasure,
In a thousand different ways;
We had our better moments,
And we had our in betweens;
But when the times were hardest,
We sure ate a lot of beans!

It wasn't that our station
Was a state of degradation--
We weren't poor relation
That our kin looked down upon;
But we never were so palmy
As to dine on fine cuisines,
And I remember clearly
When we nearly lived on beans!

I'll use the space remaining
For just a word, explaining
I'm really not complaining
That those bean age days are gone;
I enjoy old fashioned cookin',
And the simple life routines,
But prefer a bit of finer fare
To supplement the beans!

--The Buckeye Poet (1991)