Sunbonnet Soliloquy

By Jewell Ellen Smith

I’m Much Obliged

Grandma Ming dried her hands on her apron, looked down at me, and smiled.

“I’ll bet you came to get a tea cake! Right?”

“Yes, ‘um.”

“Maybe two tea cakes?”

“All you’ll gi’ me, Grandma.”

Grandma walked over to her pie-safe, opened its screened doors, and took down the crock in which she always kept a stack of the best tea cakes in the whole world.

“Help yourself, Sugar.”

I grabbed up three cakes.

“Now, sugar, what are you supposed to say?”

“Uh—Uh—Uh--” I couldn’t say anything because I had already stuffed a whole tea cake into my mouth.

“Sugar, when somebody gives you something, you’re supposed to say “I’m much obliged!” Remember?

“Yes, ‘um. Much oblige!”

Thus went one of my earliest lessons from my Arkansas grandmother.

These days, of course, grandmothers and mothers teach youngsters to say a simple thank you for any and all favors. And tea cakes are just cookies, usually out of a store-bought box.

I still like the word oblige and its sister, obligation. And, yes, I still like the old time tea cakes and bake stacks of them for my own grandchildren. (Two recipes in my file are more than 100 years old.)

The origin of the words oblige and obligation is interesting. They come from Latin ob- (toward, against) +ligare (to bind). Therefore, to oblige a person is to bind him by a command, promise, or doing him a service or favor. And an obligation is the duty which binds him.

To be obligated is to be duty bound. This implies a favor owed, debt, indebtedness, the necessity of giving something back.

A recent feature article in “The Montgomery Advertiser” carried the headline: “PATSY RUFF: Trying to give something back.”

It was the story of a 44-year-old Alabama woman named Patsy Ruff, who as a critically ill emphysema patient, in 1987 publicly appealed on TV and in the newspapers for donations to raise $200,000. to pay for a double lung transplant operation.

The money poured in -- from many, many persons. Patsy made it to Canada and successfully underwent the operation at Toronto General Hospital, receiving the lungs of a 12-year-old boy killed in a bicycle accident.

A former smoker, Pasty is now secretary and lobbyist for the American Lung Association of Alabama. She has declared: “I’m a human being giving something back to the public...what they gave me.”

Should we not all ask ourselves what our obligations are, what we should be giving back? Some 200 years ago a Swiss theologian named John Casper Lavater asked the question this way:

“What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbor, to my friends?” Lavater could well have added “to my family and home?”

A current study conducted by American educators shows the crucial effect of a child’s home environment. From birth to age 18, a child spends 87 percent of his waking hours under the control of home environment. Parents become a child’s first and most important teachers.

We repay our obligations to our parents and grandparents by teaching to our children the same social, moral, and spiritual values which were handed down to us. This includes teaching children duty to God, the Creator of us all.

More than 2,000 years ago -- about 750 B.C. -- the Old Testament prophet called Micah the Morasthite cried out to his people what their obligation to mankind and to God was. Micah shouted:

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

My Grandma Ming, Pasty Ruff, John Casper Lavater, and Micah were all saying the same thing: We must repay. We must say “Much obliged”!

Published August 1988. Click your browser’s “back” button to return.