Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509250013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But I shared with him a deep and abiding love for that white, salty snack we call popcorn.
Old Orville did a lot to revolutionize the product, and for that I always will be grateful.
Not that there was anything wrong with it before - even in college when I ate the Styrofoam-tasting stuff that came out of my airpopper, I was happy.
But Orville took something that had been around for more than 5,000 years and made it lighter and fluffier.
And there's a good chance he saved me from cracking a tooth, by making almost every kernel pop.
From the time I was a youngster, popcorn has been my favorite comfort food.
Some people reach for chocolate, some for Ben and Jerry's.
I reached for Orville.
So when he passed away this week at 88, joining Colonel Sanders wherever icons go when they die, I felt a loss.
No longer will that gentle, geeky man in the bow tie be urging me to forget my troubles and reach for a bowl of corny goodness.
My mother, too, took on popcorn as her comfort food. In high school, if a date was too assuming and reached for her hand during a movie, she plowed it immediately into a big buttery bag of the movie-theater specialty.
We ate it during family time in front of the television.
When my impatient cooking technique prevented me from properly stirring cookie dough and leaving it ridden with salt pockets, my prowess with a bowl of popcorn remained.
"Madelyn can't cook worth beans," people may have said, but they had to admit, I could make a mean bowl of popcorn - from scratch.
Orville, too, preferred the stove to the microwave, though microwave popcorn accounted for more than half of his business.
He was old-fashioned that way.
National Public Radio reported this week that Redenbacher never got sick of his popcorn and ate a bowl daily until the day he died. He's probably not the only one.
According to The Popcorn Institute, a trade association for popcorn processors, Americans consumed 17.3 billion quarts of popped popcorn last year. That's enough for 68 quarts per person.
I'm sorry Orville died before I got to tell him that I did my part.
Madelyn Rosenberg is The Roanoke Times' assistant New River editor.
by CNB