Here’s the Beef
Ok, I lied. In this post about a guy I met who saw a deer road-killed on the highway, muscled its massive, hairy carcass into his trunk, butchered it outside his state-of-the-art cottage in the woods and engorged his stainless-steel freezer with Bambi’s handi-wrapped steaks. I bull-shat when I said the guy was a stranger, because the truth is; he’s flesh-and-blood. My husband’s uncle’s first-born son, to pin the tail on the ass. I told another whopper when I said we met at a dinner party, when in reality- it was around our table at an intimate family brunch. Don’t shoot me, I’m a storyteller. Free-range.
Truth. As we gorged ourselves at brunch on home-made crepes gushing with maple syrup and convulsing with old cheese, M (I’m withholding 5 letters of his name because it sounds better this way) cheerfully recounted the inside poop behind his plasma-soaked tale.
When he was all of 7 in the sunny south of France, M’s Algerian father started taking him on his yearly trek to the chicken farm where he would buy live chickens, roosters and rabbits that he would then slaughter, butcher and fry up in a pan. Horrified, riveted, I asked M if he was traumatized by the experience, and he smiled. Sometimes he would let me hold the chicken’s feet as he cut off its head.
WTF. Why are we, why am I so sucked into a bloody story? My deeply non-rural, city-slicking roots, my wordy, indoorsy, Jewish intelligentsia, my dedicated near-vegetarianism and distaste for raw animal guts splayed on a styrofoam plate- rise up, into the delicacy of my throat. I think of my Chicago-born, Harvard-educated, professor Dad. He may be a meat-and-potatoes devotee, but in my wildest imagination, I cannot imagine him hanging a dead animal upside-down to bleed dry, let alone petting one in a zoo.
Then it hits me. Not only was my great-grandfather celebrated for home-brewing his own root-beer and pickling a mean sour, he was the only kosher butcher in Minneapolis, or at least- the kosher butcher. I call my father to check the facts and he tells it like it is. There is blood on all of our hands and meat on all of our bones.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
My father and Zaidye the Butcher
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Very provocative post, Brenda. As a meat eater, I intend to spend more time seeking out sustainable and humane butchers and when I die, I hope the beasties eat me right up! It will be their turn then. Thanks for the fine writing! Excellent as usual.
Comment by Jean-Elliott Manning — December 18, 2012 @ 9:30 am |
Credit those who kill and butcher themselves with directly confronting and taking personal responsibility for their choice to eat animals. Our meat-eating culture has all kinds of ways to sanitize and cloak the harsh realities of factory farming, killing and butchering. Don’t you think, for example, that “cow” becomes “beef” and “lamb” is called “veal” as a way to distance what’s on the plate from recognizable animals? (And as far as eating road kill, it seems like an ethical, if perhaps unwise, way to obtain food.)
Comment by Barry — December 18, 2012 @ 4:23 pm |
Damn tootin’ the beasts will have us for supper when we’re dead. Especially if we’re buried in a bio-degradible sack like Nate was in HBO’s Six Feet Under. Bon Appetit!!
What the food industry does to objectify meat is kinda like what the porn industry does to objectify women, don’t you think? Or how about putting them together? A friend in the film industry went to a film party where naked women lay on the buffet tables, boobs and pubes covered in gravalax. Oops, I mean, salmon.
I agree that eating roadkill is ethical although it ain’t legal around here, in part, I like to think- because its quality cannot be assured. A blogger friend who photographs wildlife (http://www.njwight.com) told me that she visited an east-African village where the villagers found some roadkill, took it back to the village, honored its life and death by dancing and praying, and then they all sat down to a great meal.
Comment by Burns the Fire — December 18, 2012 @ 4:41 pm |
It is more interesting when the door swings both ways. Nice story!!!
Comment by Michael Olexo — December 19, 2012 @ 9:23 pm |
This makes the original story even better.
Comment by Judith Alexander — December 29, 2012 @ 1:00 pm |
Ha! Free range indeed—on all counts!
Comment by Main Street Musings Blog — January 8, 2013 @ 9:42 am |
[...] Click here for Part Two, Flesh and Blood… [...]
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