RIVER CITY JOURNAL: WILTED LETTUCE IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR HEAVEN

Strangers become friendly suppliers of produce. A link to the past is preserved. And the tastebuds -- ah, the sumptuous delights that can be attributed to one large bowl at mealtime.

This is the time of year when your mouth is watering for wilted lettuce (recipe below) and cornbread (you're on your own).

It doesn't sound like much, but it is a wonderful meal. Your wife says it must be the poor man's caesar salad. No matter. It is the eating that counts.

The best lettuce for this purpose came, until his death last year, from your father-in-law's garden. In addition to having the first black-seeded Simpson leaf lettuce in town, he would also have the first green onions and the first radishes -- key ingredients. The leafy jade growing in a thick row in his garden was mouth-watering just to look at.

So here it is, early June, and everyone with a garden is getting tired of lettuce, lettuce, lettuce. But here's the deal. You don't have a garden. And you know what? That makes driving by a well-kept garden lush with lettuce all the harder.

Your wife had a brilliant idea. She placed a classified ad in this very newspaper. The ad simply said if you have lettuce to sell, call.

The telephone began to ring. "Are you the one wanting lettuce?"

The voices on the other end of the line seemed skeptical. Why would anyone want to buy fresh garden lettuce when everyone grows it or you can buy it at the store?

You've already explained the garden problem. And stores don't stock fresh leafy garden lettuce, the black-seeded Simpson kind. They have lettuce from California and other places where produce grows year around. And because of floods and other natural disasters, the price of lettuce right now should be listed with precious metals in The Wall Street Journal.

One of the calls was from a woman in the Thebes-Olive Branch area of Illinois. She must have decided anyone desperate enough to place an ad in the newspaper to get fresh garden lettuce deserved pity. She volunteered to bring some lettuce to your front door. No charge.

You can imagine how that lifted your spirits. Not only were you going to get enough lettuce to sate your tastebuds, your faith in human kindness and general niceness was being restored at the same time. What a deal.

Sure enough, the generous and kind woman showed up as promised with some of the most beautiful lettuce you have ever seen. And your wife set about preparing the wilted lettuce feast. The recipe:

WILTED LETTUCE FEAST

1 mess of lettuce

Some green onions

Some radishes

Some bacon

Some boiled eggs

1 splash vinegar

1 smidgeon minced garlic

Black pepper to taste

Directions: Carefully wash the lettuce and cut it up the way you like it. Cut up the green onions, the radishes and the boiled eggs too. Put the lettuce, onions, radishes and boiled eggs in a good-sized salad bowl. Cut up the bacon and fry it until it is good and crisp. Do not drain off the drippings. Splash some vinegar on the stuff in the salad bowl. Add the garlic and pepper. While the bacon grease is still very hot, pour it and the fried bacon over everything in the salad bowl. Toss and eat.

The cornbread, of course, will have been prepared to come out of the oven piping hot just as you sit down to eat. A glass of fresh-brewed iced tea (you like yours sweetened, your wife doesn't) is a nice accompaniment.

The meal this year was full of nostalgia for loved ones who have gone on and who lovingly grew and prepared and ate this same meal every spring for a long, long time. Since you and your wife had just returned from a trip to her parents' empty house to begin the ordeal of packing up the momentoes of a lifetime, she chose the special blue plates with the "Jardin" pattern that her mother treasured and used every day. And the blue placemats taken from the kitchen drawer.

The meal was scrumptious. It was a five-course banquet-in-a-bowl, dessert included. Grandma and Granddad, who by now have taught St. Peter and his bunch the heaven-on-Earth delights of wilted lettuce, would have been proud.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.