Sweet memories, sweet sins and sweet forgetfulness

So you know, up front: This is about sinning, redemption and forgiveness ... or, possibly, forgetfulness. One of those words that start with "for."

When I was a youngster, my favorite hometown in the Ozarks over yonder had a bakery. I can't remember everything in its display cases, but I do remember two things for sure: glazed doughnuts and doughnuts filed with red jelly.

I have lamented many times over the years that no one -- absolutely no one -- makes doughnuts as good as that hometown bakery. That's the way we humans are. Once we get attached to something, like a favorite food, we won't give it up for anything, even when something better comes along. Go figure.

The jelly-filled doughnuts of my memories were injected with a particular brand of jelly: Rex. Do you remember Rex jelly? It tasted like just about every fruit: strawberry, cherry, grape, apple. In fact, I'm not sure there was any fruit in Rex jelly at all. It was mostly sugar and red dye, I suppose.

But once you've tasted Rex jelly, nothing else quite matches up.

You could buy Rex jelly at the grocery store in my favorite hometown. It came in large jars. This was long before "supersized" became an advertising gimmick. In those days you bought Rex jelly in large jars so it would last awhile.

But I'm rattling on and on. I almost forgot the part about forgetfulness.

I have arrived at a certain age when remembering little things has become more and more difficult. I may start out, for example, to do one chore, but along the way I see something else that needs attention. So I tend to the something else. Later, my patient wife asks why I didn't do what I set out to do. I don't have an answer, much less a good answer.

Last weekend I was given a one-task mission. I was to drive to the farmers market downtown on Saturday morning. I was sent to get tomatoes for supper. Now we have been amply supplied with tomatoes all summer long by friends who know we believe there is no such thing as too many tomatoes. But it just so happened that Saturday morning arrived and found us tomato-less.

Off I went.

I strolled around the downtown market and noticed that a couple of stands had tomatoes. Good, I thought. My assigned job would be a snap.

There was, mixed in with all the other stands, the one that makes glazed doughnuts. I have valiantly resisted them all summer. The doughnut makers are at the Saturday-morning market and at the Thursday-afternoon market. I have steeled myself against temptation.

There. Now we're getting to the sin part.

If something is a temptation, it's probably something we shouldn't do. We are seldom tempted by things we ought to do. Right?

So there was just enough breeze on the gorgeous Saturday morning -- the first day of autumn, I believe -- to carry the smell of fresh-baked, newly glazed doughnuts across the entire area.

Whenever I wrestle with Satan, who rules over temptation with an iron fist, I like to think God is in my corner. I said a little prayer for enough will power to pass up the doughnuts. I passed the stall of the friendly preacher who sells honey. If ever I needed spiritual guidance, there he was.

But somehow my feet did a strange thing. Even as my mind said, "Turn here and head for the tomatoes," my body made a bee line for you-know-where.

As soon as I got that doughnut in my hand, I took a big bite. Eureka! Here was real doughnut in the same category as the ones from my hometown bakers half a century ago.

I ate the whole thing. Every bite tasted better than the one before. If this was sin, then count me among the fallen.

Now I'm to the point in my little story that you're probably saying, "Yeah, Joe, but you forgot the tomatoes."

See, there's where the redemption comes in. I didn't forget the tomatoes. Despite the lure of Lucifer, I had obtained a foretaste of glory divine, as the old hymn says, AND completed my appointed rounds, arriving home with a bag of beautiful tomatoes.

It was a perfect Saturday morning. I mean that. The only thing that could have made it better in the smallest, tiniest way would have been to chomp in to a doughnut filled with Rex jelly.

That might be too much to ask. Perhaps some things should be left in heaven.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.