This Was Nothing

Warning: This post may not be safe for the squeamish.



There is a recent interview with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin by a local Anchorage TV station where she is involved in preparing turkeys for Thanksgiving. In the background, you see some of the process it takes to get the bird to the store and/or dining room table. In effect, there has been some disgust and outrage.

This is nothing. I will admit, the camera operator may have picked a better backdrop, whether they were gutting a turkey or field dressing a deer. But I am guessing that those who find this disgusting are pretty much "city folk" who more or less have never seen, nor never imagined, some of the things that go on out in the country. I've seen much worse. Each winter I head down to St. Thomas, MO to partake in the annual hog butchering with my Uncle and cousins. My Uncle's neighbor does all the really hard work. We purchase the hog from him and we simply cut out the pieces we want, i.e. pork chops, ribs, bacon, sausage, etc. I like to go for the liver sausage myself, which entails a lot of "head meat." (I've got pictures and video if anyone is interested. I debated about putting them up, but decided not to.)

My mom has told me stories of her childhood living in Argyle, MO. They did not have much. So whatever meat or vegetables they grew, they tried to make the most of it. That's what everyone did after going through the Great Depression. If they decided to have chicken for dinner, my Grandma would go out to get a chicken and would swing it around to break its neck. After it was done flopping around, my Mom (or perhaps some of my aunts and uncles) would have the duty to take the feathers off of it.

My Grandma also had 2 cousins that lived on a nearby farm. They were two bachelors who never married or had kids. There was no running water on the farm and only electricity for a light and a refrigerator in the kitchen. That's all. And it stayed that way until they died in the mid-1990s. And each December, they would butcher hogs that they raised all year. And there was no mechanical process; it was all done by hand and it was hard work. I experienced it myself one year.

Food and meat just doesn't magically appear wrapped in cellophane at the grocery store. It needs to be grown, prepared and shipped there. On the farm, all this is done on a much smaller scale; the commercial operations can be gross.

So for those who live on a farm or out in the country, this is really no big deal. It's a part of everyday life. For those who live in urban areas, I can imagine this seems gross and cruel. As for the TV station that conducted the interview with Ms. Palin, to all of them in Alaska, this was probably not strange to them; only to many of us in the lower 48. But out on the farm if you're hungry, and want to eat right, you do what you have to because as a local TV newsman says, "you gotta eat!" HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!