WYSIWYG

Both of my parents’ families were farmers. My grandparents were more of the “farm to live” type farmers than the “farm for a living” type. Most of what they ate was from their farm. Many people would have considered them poor, but in talking to my grandparents and parents over the years, they never considered themselves as poor people. My mother summed it up like this: “All the people who lived on neighboring farms had the same food, same type house, and the same struggles that we had. We didn’t know what poor meant.”

Like farmers all over the world they depended on the forces of nature to bring sunshine and rain at the right time to produce the food they ate and their cash crops—cotton and corn. The income from the cash crops enabled them to buy staples like salt, sugar, flour, corn meal, etc. Salt was not only used for seasoning, but it was one of the ways to cure meats on the farm. Drying and smoking meats were the other ways to preserve meat before refrigeration. When I was a boy, every small farm had a smoke house where meat was dried and smoked.

Even into the 1980s my dad still salted fresh pork from hog-killing days. During that time my parents did not get their living from their farm, but they supplemented their income and food supply from their small farm. 

Our family was returning to serve in West Africa in late 1980, and my dad was helping us pack a crate of clothes, toiletries, food and other supplies that were unavailable where we lived in the Sahel of West Africa. He insisted that we include one of his salt-cured hams even after I informed him that the crate would be in transit for six to nine months. 

After a slow boat across the Atlantic, a two-week journey by trucks from the port of Abidjan, the crate being held in customs for long periods of time on both sides of the ocean and at the customs warehouses in Ouagadougou, our crate arrived at our home after eight months in transit. When we received a crate that we had packed, a footlocker full of goodies from our family and carried by volunteers traveling to work with us, or that rare package sent through the mail that was not stolen enroute, it was a fun time for our family as we unpacked all the treats.

As the family excitedly unpacked the 4’ x 4’ x 7’ wooden crate, no one but me was interested in the condition of the salted ham. As I unwrapped the heavy waxed paper, I discovered that the meat was covered in maggots. It was disgusting and disappointing. That evening I gave the meat to Robila, our night guard, and told him to dispose of it. A couple of hours later Robila came to our door and showed me a beautiful hunk of country ham. He had cut off the spoiled meat and underneath was perfectly preserved meat. 

I could not convince other members of my family to eat any of the ham, but Robila and I loved it. Over the next few days, we ate country ham three times a day.

It’s not always “what you see is what you get.” In this case “what you see” was repulsive, but what we got was delicious.

The expression “what you see is what you get” was popularized by Flip Wilson in sketches on Rowan and Martin’s “Laugh-In” program in the 1970s. It was popularized worldwide in the early days of word processing when what you saw on the screen was not what the printed document would actually look like. Control codes appeared on the screen rather than some of the actual finished product. So, the WYSIWYG acronym was popularized.

In dealing with people WYSIWYG is not always true. Scripture supports this with the story of Samuel showing up in Bethlehem to anoint a new king. The Lord spoke to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (I Samuel 16:7 ESV).

As we deal with people every day everywhere, we are held to this same accountability: What you see is not necessarily what you get.