Growing Up in Kansas
Eating Crow
Leroy and I
were driving around Pawnee Lake yesterday afternoon when I saw a dead crow in
the ditch. I said that I was pretty sure my Father told me that there used to
be "a five-cent-a-head bounty back in the good old days!” Then,
for some strange reason, I asked him if he had ever eaten crow.
Leroy
replied that he never had the pleasure, but the rest of the family had, except
Grandpa. I immediately asked for the rest of the story.
It
seems that his Grandpa cleaned a crow one time and told Grandma that the crow
was a prairie chicken. He said, “That cleaned meat was almost as black as the crow.” Grandma
then cooked the offering. “Of course, she thought it was a prairie
chicken,” Leroy said. "So at
dinner, Grandpa, he just passed on the crow and sent it around the table."
Grandma
pretty much summed up the family's attitude about the so-called prairie chicken. “That hen
must have been pretty old as it didn’t taste very good and was pretty darn
tough.”
Leroy
asked how his Grandfather kept from laughing at the dinner table. He
told me, “He did not dare to and did not think Grandma ever knew that crow
had been eaten by the rest of the family.”
Leroy
and I laughed all the way back from the lake.
*As told to me. The names have been
changed to protect the innocent… By Aldwin
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1 comment:
I very much enjoyed “Eating Crow.” It was well-written, and the story line really flowed. And it was such a darling look into a family dynamic that happened to include a rascally member. I once had a rascally uncle that pulled the same thing on us kids when we were in grade school. Said uncle had caught an opossum and talked his wife into frying parts of it at the same time she was frying squirrel for the family dinner. This was in central MO. Anyway, the rascally uncle made sure that we kids each got a piece of fried opossum. Once was enough!
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