Chew On This for a While

“Over the lips, across the tongue, look out tummy, here it comes.”

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Not much of a toast. Short, simple, sufficient. A little ditty my friend, Tom, recited on the cusp of swallowing something toxic, usually with the names of Jack, Jim or George. His excesses sent him away early.

Stomachs endure a harsh and servile environment. They’re slave to the whims of the eyes and vicissitudes of the mind, both savage and insatiable tyrants. Tom’s ditty was an early warning refrain.

Carnal lusts crave chocolate, all things fried and panaceas of 80 proof. A civil war rages inside the body. Destruction is its fate. What does it matter who wins the war, prime ribs or Jack, a superfluity of steroids or cirrhosis?

My mama knew these things. She wasn’t a philosopher, but she was one helluva good cook. She had respect for the belly. I trusted her explicitly until the day she tried to trick me into eating liver. It scared me for life. I suffered PTSD before it became popular.

Oh, it looked so tasty, so wholesome. Those smothered onions on top, a large dollop of ketchup on the side, mashed potatoes swimming in gravy, biscuits the size of baseballs, Kentucky pole beans and steaming hot apple cobbler. Never trust anything that seems so perfect!

There were clues that something was up as I walked home from school that day for lunch. Yeah, we could walk home for lunch in small towns. Plus, we went barefoot until the World Series ended and again after April 1st. Seems strange now, as quaint as yesteryear’s backyard clotheslines. Pity kids today without these perks. They’re emotionally damaged goods.

Anyway, about a block away a vile smell wafted onto the crisp October air, and not that of fried chicken. No! This stench singed magnolia leaves. Their scorched, shriveled torsos littered the sidewalks in a fetal, death-like repose.

So foul was the odor that birds flew wildly in a migratory frenzy, seeking refuge. Our house appeared to be on fire, so intense was the smoke from the kitchen window. I pinched my nose and opened the door.

“Oh, son, I cooked you something special today,” mama said. Then I saw the source of this noxious pollution, a lifeless slab of black meat lying on the plate. Taste me, taste me, it taunted.

As you know, children are always starving. They’ll try eating anything once. My mother stood by the stove in her white apron, smiling as I took the first bite. I remember her words:
“Son, always chew your food well, 32 times for each bite,” she said.

Young boys are like dogs in many respects. Once food’s in the mouth, there’s no turning back. The teeth get about two hits on it before it crosses the tongue and is long gone south.

Her smile soon turned to panic along with the hopeless grimace on my face. I chewed and chewed and chewed that wretched flesh. With each chew it got bigger and bigger and bigger. It wouldn’t go down. My mouth had become the host for an alien creature that used it to multiply its loathsome offspring.

My mouth bloated, my eyes bulged and my body swelled. I felt the end was near. The consequences of that meal live in infamy to this day. Even now, life is a struggle to survive the remembrance of this brutal abuse of my childhood innocence.

Since this episode, and until I left home, I avoided mama’s strange mystery meat. Not that I distrusted my sweet mother’s intents, but as it’s said, “Trust, but verify.” From that day on I relied on my dog, Whitey, to be the canary in the cave, as it were, to test mama’s mysterious victuals.

Whether this was an isolated case of unintentional poisoning or some out-of-body experience, I can’t say. I simply refer to it as ‘the day that the liver multiplied.’ Trust is hard to build, quick to evaporate, and almost impossible to renew.

A vile smoke reeks regularly from the Congressional kitchen. Their disguised promises smell like liver and are served up by toady bureaucratic parasites. The insidious cycle of toxic giveaways gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

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The choice of swallowing these loathsome handouts is ours. Who will volunteer to be the canary? Now, chew on this allegory for a while and see if you can get it to go down.


Bud Hearn
November 6, 2015