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There are animal rights activists who go berserk
when they see a mink coat. Fur
is forbidden to them. They
will throw paint or whatever they can to ruin the value.
Their goal is to stop the use of animals bred for their fur.
They don’t want to see animals used for scientific experiments
to test for diseases that may help humans. Strange, though, these same people who will fight for the life of a single mink or even a guinea pig will chow down on a hamburger. Surely, they couldn’t do this if they had ever looked into the placid, large brown eyes of a cow. They seem such restful, trusting animals. They stand patiently while man or machine takes their mother’s milk. How could someone who loves a mink become cannibalistic enough to slaughter such a trusting creature for a meal? After the Depression of the Thirties, my father
bought a farm and shortly thereafter bought a calf.
We went to pick her up in an old square, four-door car.
I sat on the back seat while Pinky stood on the floor.
She was named after my mother’s sister, named affectionately
because everyone loved Pinky. We
raised the cow until breeding time and then the calf, which was female,
was kept and named Bunny. In
high school, it was my chore to milk them morning and night.
With a bucket of warm water I went down to the cowshed in rain or
sleet, summer heat or frozen winter, to milk them.
There’s a knack to milking a cow, but much easier than milking
a goat. Time was when Pinky
and Bunny passed the age of milk giving and my father sold them rather
than put them on our dinner table.
It’s much easier to eat someone else’s cow. Pork is the problem.
No meat stirs me more than a piece of country ham.
But it has to be someone else’s porker. About the time we got Pinky, my father bought a
little white pig which he named Salome, after Li’l Abner’s pet.
She was like a puppy and went with everywhere around the farm.
If you sat down, Salome would try to get in your lap.
Pigs have a way of becoming hogs and Salome had to be put in a
pen, with an elective fence area to root around in.
It seems that a kid has to give every animal a name.
When Salome had four piglets which we kept, I appropriately named
them Mullett, Gullett, Dopey and, my favorite, Gabby. If ever an animal could talk, or thought he
could talk, that was Gabby. When
I went to slop them in the morning or after school, he always greeted me
with the oinks that brought me up-to-date on how he spent his day.
But that was nothing like the day he had his “operation.”
To keep meat from being tough on a male pig, he is deprived of
his masculinity. The
product, Mountain Oysters, was a delicacy my father enjoyed immensely.
Gabby didn’t care too much for the sacrifice, though.
When I came from school and started down to see them, he began
his complaint as soon as he saw me.
You would have thought he was a country lawyer addressing a jury
the way was wound up in explaining the indignity he had been subjected
to. Gabby and the other pigs had a way of growing up
and become hogs. He still
talked to me when we saw each other, until November came and it was time
for hog killing. It was always done in cold weather.
A large cut out of a galvanized tank held boiling water ready.
One person would shoot the hog between the eyes and another slit
the throat to spill the blood. The
carcass was then put into the scalding water to remove the hair.
My father didn’t want Salome killed that year, because she was
a good breeder. They
misunderstood and Salome went with her children. A cabin behind our farm house was a reminder of
the days when cooking was not done in the main house for danger from
fire. This was where the
carcasses went, hanging them upside down from the ceiling while their
body parts were butchered and separated accordingly.
Some years the meat was salt cured.
Others, hickory smoke cured. When I came home and saw my friend Gabby hanging
from the ceiling in the cabin, I lost my taste for pork that year.
I never again named one of the hogs we raised.
It’s hard to dine on a friend. So, if the Protectors of the Mink want to really
take on a cause, let them march on McDonalds and Burger King. The cows would appreciate it.
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