Sherry Chandler » I have eaten squirrel brains and I am not demented
I have eaten squirrel brains and I am not demented
Yet.
Though I’m told I’ll probably be the last to know.
And that was in the day before agribusiness gifted us with Mad Cow Disease.
Squirrel and rabbit could be called the “soul food” of poor white southerners. Certainly they made a protein supplement when times were hard. My mother could shoot a squirrel out of a tree with a 22 rifle, and I’ve eaten a many, as we say, but it was a right smart while ago. I’m more inclined to buy my protein shrink-wrapped in plastic these days.
Squirrel brains are considered a delicacy. There’s a knack to cooking them and to eating them. My Daddy taught me how to do it and how to suck the marrow from a bone. I won’t go into it here. Some are squeamish. But I could do it if times got hard. Dress a chicken, too, and butcher a cow.
Though I do wonder why squirrel brains and not rabbit brains. Rebecca?
Anyway, to get to the point, the Lexington Herald-Leader endorses Barack Obama but, I’m glad to say, they aren’t just cheerleaders for their golden boy. Here are some wise words from their editorial today, and many thanks to the correspondent who pointed me toward them (emphasis added):
On the heels of his drubbings in Kentucky and West Virginia, we have two words for Sen. Barack Obama: road trip.
Once he has sealed the Democratic nomination, he should enlist one or both of the Clintons to show him around the states he lost so decisively.
Former President Bill Clinton has traveled enough Kentucky backroads this spring that he probably wouldn’t need a guide. And if actor George Clooney joined in, they’d have a native along.
What the presumptive nominee and his media entourage would find is that despite the region’s heartbreaking poverty, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s stronghold in the foothills and highlands of central Appalachia is not the exclusive domain of white racists desperate for their next meal of squirrel brains.
The region has been home to anti-slavery abolitionists, some of the American labor movement’s most courageous acts and a strain of Democratic politics that produced such stalwart progressives as the late Rep. Carl D. Perkins.
Obama didn’t contest Kentucky. So it’s not surprising that he lost or that he lost some counties 10 to 1. Kentucky Democrats are loyal to Bill Clinton because his years as president produced measurable improvements in their lives. Poverty declined while more people gained health insurance.
Bill Clinton’s economic expansion really did lift all boats, while the Bush years have been very, very good for a few while leaving many more people bailing furiously to keep afloat.
Obama shouldn’t write off Kentucky and West Virginia to Republican John McCain. But Obama needs to put some meat on his “change” message to reassure voters that, like Hillary Clinton, he’s offering practical solutions, especially for the economy.
…
With the notable exception of African-Americans, Hillary Clinton’s base is the Democratic Party base.
And Kentucky Democrats turned out in record numbers Tuesday. Forty-three percent of Democrats voted; the next highest turnout in a Democratic presidential primary was 31 percent in 1992.
I do not agree with the editor’s presumption that Obama is the Democratic nominee. After all, they said it themselves: Hillary Clinton’s base is the Democratic base.
But when, and if, he is that nominee then he’d better come see us, ya hear.
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10 Comments
1. Helen Losse replies at 22nd May 2008, 2:21 pm :
Hi Sherry, I’ve eaten squirrel and rabbit but no brains. Actually, both are good.
And now on to Obama. I can understand your being put out by his lack of campaigning in Kentucky. But I do understand the difference in campaigning for a primary and for a general election.
I do hope, if (when) Obama’s the Democratic candidate, Democrats rally around him. I had hoped Hillary Clinton could serve her 8 years, and a then-seasoned Obama could follow with his 8. But I do understand why African Americans are tired of waiting.
I will vote Democratic in November. My questions have already been asked and answered.
2. Rebecca Clayton replies at 22nd May 2008, 7:22 pm :
My first thought about rabbit brains is the widespread fear of “rabbit fever.” Larry, my expert in local wild game agrees. His mom, a great fancier of squirrel brains (and, like your mom, an excellent shot) would not touch rabbit (or duck; she had been told that wild duck could give you rabbit fever). The CDC fact sheets inform me that you can get rabbit fever (tularemia) from squirrels and other rodents.
Which brings us to groundhog brains. Nobody’s said you could get presenile prionic dementia from groundhog brains yet, have they? Groundhog is still popular here among people our age and older. (The young folks won’t eat anything that doesn’t appear on a pizza.)
“Here comes Granny a-clickin’ her cane;
Says she’ll eat that groundhog’s brain.
Groundhog.”
I don’t have a family tradition of wild game. The potato-famine era immigrants who settled western Iowa were deeply suspicious of those unfamiliar wild plants and animals. However, we did eat all the odd bits of the domestic animals, and I’ve consumed my share of pork and beef brains. Well, we’ve all got to die of something.
3. koshembos replies at 22nd May 2008, 11:15 pm :
My apology for not using my driver license name; I teach and don’t want my personal opinions to have any affects on my students.
To add insult to injury, I’m a vegetarian. The endorsement by the Lexington Herald-Leader is bizarre. If Hillary is the party, who is Obama? A crusader, an impostor, a right wing insurgent, a cancer?
4. sherry replies at 23rd May 2008, 7:03 am :
Oh Koshembos, don’t apologize. “Sherry Chandler” is not exactly my driver license name either, though it’s the name under which I publish books and poems. I use it here mostly for commercial reasons, having been told once upon a time that it’s name-recognition that tends to sell books. This blog started out to be about culture but I guess all culture is political.
And my goodness, don’t apologize for being vegetarian. Thanks for being tolerant of my macho. I was just struttin my hillbilly stuff, though I’m not really a hillbilly (any more than Larry Webster is). We’re both Ridge Runners by birth, raised in the northern hump of Kentucky, within miles of the Ohio River. Larry was raised on the Kentucky River. George Clooney, by the way, is an Ohio River boy, too. Not by any stretch of the imagination hillbilly.
The area was as economically depressed but not as isolated as Appalachia, so I was raised on stories of deprivation and making do. My great-grandmother’s family was split up when the mother died, farmed out to families for orphan/servants, that kind of thing.
Now the affluent sportsmen have found the area and, in my home county, we have a winery and a hunt club. You can sip home-grown merlot while listening to the sound of artillery. Recently, my grandfather’s home place was sold to some one who plans to use it for his own private hunting estate. Georgia, if you’re reading this, that’s what Renie sacrificed for. Guess it would make a poem, huh?
So I am not as gun-friendly as all that, though I understand Rebecca’s admiration for the mountain girls who kill their deer to “help provide” and to be on equal footing with the boys. And you might say I straddle both wings of the party, the wine-sippers and the lunch-buckets.
As for the H-L’s editorial, I found it offensive on several levels. Why invite Obama to take a ride on the Clinton’s efforts? It’s like the NYTimes that endorsed her but puts Obama on the front page the night she has a big win here.
5. sherry replies at 23rd May 2008, 1:03 pm :
Rebecca, I’d forgotten “rabbit fever,” aka tuleremia, which goes to show how detached I now am from my roots. Much more likely to shoot critters with a camera these days.
My father in his wisdom made a social distinction between those who are groundhog and possum and those who did not. Probably it won’t surprise you to learn that we did not.
I love that song, but don’t think I ever heard the Granny lyric:
Here’s Matt Downer & Clark Williams in Sweetwater, Tennessee:
and here’s a silly Arlo Guthrie version with no embed code: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXbW70c2lsU&feature=related
6. Jack replies at 24th May 2008, 3:52 am :
I love ya, Sherry, but “their boy,” isn’t exactly appropriate language in reference to Obama, especially in context of what I think you were saying. Not alleging anything but lack of attention to the words chosen.
7. Helen Losse replies at 24th May 2008, 11:30 am :
I didn’t mean to be offensive, Sherry. Especially not to you. But by the time I’ve explained my explanation I’m running out of talent. This whole primary is exasperating.
8. sherry replies at 24th May 2008, 12:20 pm :
Helen! I’m not offended with you! I have a great deal of respect for you and your opinions. And I hold you in my heart.
I just didn’t want to argue or top your point. I thought your comment could stand. And goodness knows, I’ve said enough. Probably too much.
I said a lot more here but the internet ate it. Now my son just pulled up in the driveway from Oak Ridge. Hold that thought…
9. Rebecca Clayton replies at 26th May 2008, 6:25 pm :
I love the Tennessee version of “Groundhog!” West Virginians play something rather different. The little tag-end fiddle part at the end of each verse is wonderful. Larry says he’s only heard one fiddler, Jimmy Costa, play something like that. Do you know these musicians?
10. sherry replies at 28th May 2008, 2:23 pm :
Never heard of these guys, Rebecca. Just went exploring around YouTube looking for a version that used that Granny verse you quoted and found them. By far the best version I found. Even better than the Norman Blake version, but then Norman Blake is a musician whose excellence I can recognize but whose work doesn’t really appeal to me. The one I first heard was Doc Watson, but I guess that would be a North Carolina version.
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