AUGUST 1997

An image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the face of a waffle, to the astonishment of diners at the International House of Pancakes just off of Highway 99 in Fresno, California. On Tuesday morning at 8:30 A.M., a miracle was served up with the maple syrup, according to Louise Crowder of Bakersfield. "I was reaching for the butter, because I like a lot of melted butter on my waffles, you know, instead of just drowning them in syrup, like most people do," explained Crowder, "when I saw the face of the Blessed Virgin right there, on my waffle! Just imagine! She was on my waffle."

Crowder's cry of surprise brought many diners as well as IHOP employees to her table. People crowded around and gazed in awe at the image of the Virgin Mary, which was marred only slightly by a crease in her forehead caused by a butter knife. Alan Snyder, manager of the IHOP, gasped, "It is the Blessed Virgin!" as several people fell to their knees, knocking over a cart that held raspberry syrup and marmalade. "Damn!" muttered an onlooker as she tried to wipe the raspberry syrup from the knees of her white slacks. "Well, who cares about syrup anyway?" she cried, "this is the Virgin Mary!" Everyone murmured reverent agreement as all eyes were momentarily drawn to the bright purple knees.

"No doubt about it," said Dean Fowler, a truck driver who had been enjoying a short stack and a side of hash browns, "it was the Virgin Mary. I'd know her anywhere." Fowler had only stopped at this particular IHOP because he had to wait while a flat tire was being repaired. He considers the flat to be a miracle itself. "If I hadn't had that flat," he mused solemnly, "I never would have come into this place and I never would have seen the Virgin on the waffle. Also, my tire was fixed in record time, and they only charged me half of what it usually costs. Coincidence?" he asked knowingly. "I don't think so."

When asked what he thought of the Appearance, Patrick O'Donnell, Bishop of the local diocese, answered, "It is a once in a lifetime event. Truly a miracle. How often do you see Waffle Virgins?"

So far, at this IHOP, in the two weeks since the Appearance, there have been reports of a dozen healings, brought about just by ordering the waffles; four confirmed gastro-intestinal cures ("strawberry waffles don't give me gas any more!"); and hundreds of reports of flat tires that healed themselves by not happening in the first place. Since the Appearance, business has been booming for this previously near-bankrupt IHOP, and owner Snyder feels he was truly blessed. He summed it up by saying, "This is the real miracle—the Virgin Mary helping a flapjack-flipper find his way back to solvency."

Way down yonder and far to the south, in Pink Hill, Georgia, a sawmill worker noticed the Virgin Mary in his plate of grits. "She was just there," Albert Grimes explained emotionally, his eyes brimming with tears. "The Virgin Mary was in my grits." Family members confirmed the sighting.

Grimes' aunt, Thelma Mae, elaborated. "We was all just sitting around the table, passing the black-eyed peas and the red-eye gravy, when all of a sudden Mary Belle—she's my half-sister, Albert's mother, but that still makes me his aunt, even though Mary Belle and I have different fathers—well, actually all seven of us have different fathers, but none of us put up with any trash talk about Mama, and don't you forget it. So anyway, Mary Belle just plopped a mess of grits on Albert's plate and there she was! The Virgin Mary! Then two of them black-eyed peas slid right into place and Bingo! The Virgin had eyes! It was the damndest thing you ever did see. Mind you, I don't really think that the Blessed Virgin was cross-eyed, but that ain't no never mind. Thing is, it was the actual Virgin herself, plain as day, surrounded by a halo of red-eye gravy." Thelma Mae paused to spit a wad of tobacco juice across the room, missing the spittoon by mere inches which prompted an encouraging, "Gettin' closer, Grandma!" from one of the many Grimes children. "And just think," she concluded humbly, wiping her chin with the back of her hand, "the Virgin chose our own little bitty cabin for her visitation."

The cabin isn't quite so humble any more after the donations from the hundreds of visitors to the Grits Shrine. And those donations have been put to good use. The outhouse is long gone, replaced by indoor plumbing that includes one of those shiny, pearly-colored toilet seats, making the Grimes' dwelling a neighborhood showplace. But the family makes it clear that money is not the issue.

"If we turn a deal on a pickup out of this, ain't no harm," offered Elmo Grimes, Albert's father, "but that ain't what this is all about. It's about the look of rapture on the sweet faces of them visitors when they view the grits for the first time—we had the grits freeze-dried so's everything would stay in place—and everyone leaves here with true peace in their hearts. Well, 'ceptin for some of the young'uns who giggle at a cross-eyed Virgin Mary—and they oughta be whupped if you ask me—everyone else finds that inner peace." Elmo repeated the phrase as he emptied the donation box for the third time that day, "Yessir, inner peace."

"You coulda knocked me over with a feather," were the words of Edna Muldoon from Rock Ridge, North Dakota, as she explained seeing the Virgin Mary clearly outlined on her kitchen floor in Carter's Little Liver Pills. "I spilled the whole darn bottle on the linoleum," she explained, "and it made such a godawful clatter it set my teeth on edge. Of course they ain't my own teeth any more!" she added with a slap of her thigh and a huge cackle that revealed no teeth at all in the Muldoon mouth at the moment. "But there's no doubt about it—those liver pills spread out and formed an image of the Virgin, and here's the pitchers to prove it!"

As the reporters gathered around the photographs they saw the liver pills, in the shape of the Virgin Mary, strewn across Muldoon's kitchen floor. One reporter whispered, "Jesus! It looks like the chalk outlines the cops do after a murder!" "Hey, knock it off!" someone growled. "Don't be sacrilegious!" The reporter was silenced and dutifully studied the Virgin/liver pill photos.

As Muldoon passed around the photos, she explained why they didn't look exactly like the outline that was currently on her floor. "Damn cat ate a couple of those pills just before you got here." Another raucous cackle and then, "Say, fellas, any of you ever play sail-cat? That's one Tabby won't be back for a while!"

Invited into the house where the kitchen had been roped off for several days with some clothesline, one reporter noticed that all of the pills were oriented, lengthwise, in a north-south direction. When he asked Muldoon how so many pills could have scattered randomly yet ended up aligned so precisely, she snapped, "Who are you to question how God works His miracles? What do you think happened here, anyway? You think I got down on my hands and knees, throwing out my back again, and arranged the pills so's they'd look like the Virgin? And then called ol' Jake down at The Dispatch and asked him to come take a look? Only Jake was at the bar again, as usual, so I had to leave a message with that no-count Delbert? And while I was waiting I straightened out all the pills so's they'd be just so? Is that what you think happened, Smarty Britches?"

At that the reporters rolled their eyes and began drifting away. They were nearly trampled by the first busload of pilgrims who had just arrived to view the Liver Pill Virgin.

There is a lesson in this for all of us. We would all do well to look carefully before rolling up that next tortilla, or plunging a fork into that piece of lemon meringue pie, or tearing into that pizza. Examine those victuals closely, friends. You might be just a Pop-Tart away from a Victual Virgin Visitation. 

© 1997 Judith Hayes  

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