I have no admiration for oysters unless they are alive and in their natural habitat. Not long ago, my wife brought home a small tin of smoked ones. I decided on a sneak attack, saying, “Don’t you feel guilty about being involved in taking innocent little oysters from their happy, watery homes?”
My lady, who is no stranger to conversational tournaments, replied, “Aren’t you ashamed of being involved in taking happy little pigs away from their pens to turn into bacon, chops and footballs?”
She had me there. I had really never given much thought to the deeper meanings of individual dietary practices. When a man starts to consider such matters, he is like a traveller setting out on a slow train for an uncertain destination. Right away, I began to formulate my position on the civil rights, if any, of pigs. Next, I began to wonder whether eggs have souls. (I was eating one at the time.)
Everything was simpler in the old days. The Good Book told us we were to have dominion over all of God’s creation. I always thought this meant we were permitted to devour any other creature in the world. During the Dirty Thirties, people, now grown old, ate whatever they could get because they were hungry. My family had a garden and we consumed a great many vegetables. I liked beets and carrots because red and orange were my favorite colours.
We also took food from the wild. Steamed pigweed was quite palatable. Illegally slaughtered prairie chickens were noble little birds and very tasty. After an infrequent rain, I was expected to gather wild mushrooms. In those days there was lots of horse manure around and it made mushrooms grow like crazy. There were also herds of cows which each required the services of a monstrous defecating bull. For some unaccountable reason, I began to wonder how well mushrooms grew around the domiciles of the national and provincial governments.
During the Dirty Thirties, some people caught bony chubs in the river, popped their eviscerated carcasses into a flour sack and dropped them into a pot of boiling water. The result was a clear, gluey soup. My family never did that. The river was far away and we had no means of transportation other than an old bicycle. It was said some people ate gophers. My family didn’t do that, either. I have never in my life fricasseed a gopher.
Once upon a time, individual dietary preferences – whole lifestyles, in fact – were governed by religious rules. Now, too many decisions about what we eat, how we live and what opinions we express are hedged about by the rules of political correctness. Some people who subsist on spinach, wild berries and broccoli are unrestrained in their condemnation of old carnivores like me. Others accuse me of being a stiff-necked fossil when I say I would rather be married to a woman than another man. That’s why I am.
A poor old fellow like me just can’t understand how to cope with a changing world and this political correctness nonsense. It’s frightening to know that revealing personal beliefs in public can lead to fines, lawsuits and even incarceration. Just one more time, I will take the risk. If forced to choose between being a vegetarian and being in a same-sex marriage, I would opt for being a vegan. The contest was close because same-sex partners can eat anything they want.
