Childhood Memory: George Washington's Breakfast and the Cherry Tree Myth

This is a story about my gullibility as well as my hatred of tea.

When I was in elementary school, especially in the early years of Kindergarten and first grade, our founding fathers, presented to us in pictures of their heads immortalized in the stone of Mount Rushmore, were veiled in a sort of lofty majesty. I was very patriotic when I was little, jumping up every morning to say the Pledge of Allegiance, trying to sing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" the loudest, and sitting rapt with attention when they told us about how we beat the British in the Revolution because our soldiers could only afford tattered green and brown clothes, which allowed us to blend into the landscape while the British marched proudly in their distinctive red-coats.

In Kindergarten, they told us a couple of days in advance (my teacher Ms. Gaither and her assistant Ms. Brown) that we would be reading a piece of literature called George Washington's Breakfast, which would reveal to us the morning diet of the first president of the United States. I was enormously excited, particularly when the teachers told us that we would be celebrating his memory by actually eating his breakfast one day in class.

So, the big day came, and we all ran over to the circular carpet, grabbed the square pillows from the heap in the corner, and sat down in preparation for story time. Ms. Gaither sat in her rocking chair (I think that it was a rocking chair; this is how I remember it) and read us the book, which included some interesting facts about Washington, including the names of some of his pets and his shoe size. The book was about a boy who was named for the President and who is desperate to find out all that he can about Washington - especially his preferred breakfast. His family promises to cook him the breakfast if he can find out what it was through research. His epic search extends across the pages until - finally - the moment that we cross-legged kindergarteners had been waiting for with bated breath - the last page, in which it is revealed that George Washington's breakfast of choice was. . .tea and hoe-cakes.

A couple of the more crude vocabulary-savvy boys giggled at the concept of hoe-cakes, at which point our teacher hastily explained that hoe-cakes are like pancakes. I mused and mused over the food. . somehow I had expected it to be grander, like the breakfast of kings - with lavish french toast and sugar dusted fruit or something like that - but I was excited all the same. I had never tried tea before, and some of my Southern-bred classmates told me, "Oh, tea is the best! I can't believe you haven't had it before. It's even better than milk!"

"Nuh-uh." I said, "I don't think there's anything better than milk."

They shrugged. "George Washington thought so." And they had a point - tea had to be excellent if George Washington liked it.

So, the next day when we came to school, we sat patiently at our desks while Ms. Gaither passed out little plastic plates of hoe-cakes (which were basically pancakes without syrup) and little Dixie cups of some sort of medium-brown tea. I fidgeted during this process: they were very strict, and in retrospect I think rightfully so, about not letting anyone eat until everyone had been served. I gazed into my cup of tea with great anticipation, and when the time came to begin, I took a couple of bites of the hoe-cakes, imagining that I was sitting across the breakfast table from Washington himself like the little boy is on the cover of the book. I gagged a little bit due to the dryness of the cakes (they really were no more extraordinary than pancakes) and took a huge gulp of the tea, expecting sweet fruitiness for whatever reason. The bitter, sugar-less liquid I swallowed was not at all what I expected, and I coughed and coughed and swallowed some of it down the wrong pipe, so to speak. When I had recovered, I wondered if I had tasted it right, and so I tried the tiniest little sip again, and was once more disappointed. I looked around me and saw kids eagerly downing their cups of tea and munching on their hoe-cakes. More than being disappointed in the tea, I was disappointed (and knew that George Washington would be disappointed) with myself. I didn't like the food of the founding father I felt so strangely close to after the narrative that we read - we never would have been able to eat breakfast together and talk about different types of tea that we liked. As I grew older, I came to have more self-esteem, and as I continued to dislike tea, I attributed that early disappointment to George Washington's lack of beverage choices back in the day, as opposed to a failure on my part to have good taste.

Next, for the Cherry Tree Myth, which is, in fact, a myth (I think). Most everyone has heard the story, I'm sure, of Washington's childhood act of bludgeoning his father's beloved cherry tree with a hatchet that he had received as a gift. When his father comes inquiring after the perpetrator, Washington bravely steps forward and says, "Father, I cannot tell a lie - 'twas me." or something like that, and his father immediately forgives him because of his honesty. Now, this story, I feel, is fairly plausible - I mean, George Washington didn't go dragon hunting or anything like that - the story could actually happen. So, I accepted it without question from my early years of elementary school onward; years passed, and no contradiction in present time reared its head and cried, "The Cherry Tree Story is a LIE!!!" even when that same contradiction, sometimes called reality, reared its head and devoured such things as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. I'll be quite honest here (in honor of Mr. Washington) and admit that the question of the validity of this story never actually troubled me until a few weeks ago, when I was sitting in Civics and Economics and someone mentioned it playfully in reference to what we were discussing. Something in the casual quality of their voice made me do a minor double-take. I had to think if I believed the story or not, and I realized that I had never really had reason to question it. But then, as I thought about it, the story seemed a tad absurd, and at that point, I ceased to believe it a little, and the little bit remaining of the child that inhabits my soul died. Suzy Evans, PhD, had this to say about the myth: "An early nineteenth century American book peddler, itinerant preacher and author, "Parson" Mason Locke Weems is best known today as the source of some of the most beloved if apocryphal stories about George Washington. The famous story of George and the Cherry Tree is included in Weems' masterpiece, The Life and Memorable Actions of Washington, which was originally published in 1800 (the year after Washington's death) and was an immediate best-seller. Reprinted in ever more inventive editions over the next twenty-five years, it contained, according to historian Edward Lengel, "some of the most beloved lies of American history, including the famous cherry tree myth" and other exaggerated or invented anecdotes that extolled Washington’s virtues and provided an entertaining and morally instructive tale for the young republic." I just skimmed through her blog, and it is pretty fantastic, so here is the link for it: http://lincolnslunch.blogspot.com/2011/03/cherry-tree-and-invention-of-george.html. And so, sadly, our first President lifted his veil of mystery and shocked me with his choice of food and the realization that he may never have raised a hand against any foliage or greenery - and that is how I came to hate tea.