Bacon Tree

We have a serious problem with education in this country.

 

I know people complain that kids can’t read or do arithmetic. I guess those skills are important if you work at NASA. But this is a much bigger societal problem.

 

Kids think bacon grows in trees.

 

Yeah, a recent research study asked kids 4-7 years old to identify the source of different foods and 47% of them said that bacon grows on bacon trees.

 

Another 52% thought that hot dogs were grown on a tree and that hamburgers were grown on bushes. Buns and all.

 

So, my question is what is wrong with these kid’s parents?

 

Or as Joe Biden is so fond of saying, “Come on!”

 

I’m thinking that any parent who can’t teach their children the difference between bacon and broccoli shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.

 

Or own a dog.

 

I knew where bacon and hot dogs came from when I was 4-7 years old. But I guess mine wasn’t the normal childhood.

 

I got to learn this lesson first hand.

 

Growing up out in the country, our family participated every winter in a community hog slaughtering.

 

Sounds like a lot of fun for a five year old kid, doesn’t it? Killing hogs.

 

Actually, it was.

 

Me and my brother were in charge of scraping all his the hair off the hogs before they could be processed. This involved boiling a big metal vat full of water and paraffin wax.

 

The dead hogs were dropped into the metal vat and once they got good and covered with water and wax, the adults would hand us kids a piece of sheet metal and we went to scraping.

 

You wouldn’t believe how much hair is on a hog. It’s long and wiry and pretty tough to get off. So while the wax was still warm, we went to scrapping like crazy.

 

Our reward would be a big pot of freshly cooked pork skins at the end of the day.

 

I wonder how many people, not just children, know what’s really in that bag of pork rinds they buy every day at the convenience store.

 

It’s skin. Yeah, the same skin that the hogs wear when they roll around in manure and mud holes all day.

 

The same skin that us little kids would scrape and scrape until all the hair was gone. Nobody wants hairy pork rinds!

 

I imagine that proper little business lady who likes to munch on gourmet pork skins at her desk every day never stops to thinks where they come from.

 

I can promise you that if most people ever went to a ‘hog killing’, they would probably eat less pork. Especially if they went to our community hog killings.

 

It was pretty rough.

 

No part of the hog was unused. We ate the feet, the stomach, the ears and the brains. We even ate the blood.

 

I imagine most people have never heard of blood pie. Or eaten it.

 

I have.

 

There was a little old lady who always came to our hog killings to catch the animals’ blood in a bucket. All of us kids were appalled by this.

 

What in the world was this old lady going to do with all that blood? My brother said that she a vampire and planned to put a big jug of pig blood in the fridge to enjoy while eating Chex snack mix.

 

Instead, she added a flour and sugar and some other stuff to the blood, poured it in a pie crust and baked it.

 

She brought us one of the pies. My mother didn’t tell us what it was made of until we had all eaten a big piece. Even then, I didn’t care. I asked for another slice. It was that good.

 

Maybe that’s why over the years, I have learned to eat just about anything that doesn’t eat me first.

 

Raw fish? Yum. Live eels? Yep. Sheep testicles? Delicious! Cow tongue? Well, you get the idea. I have consumed enough ‘gross’ stuff to last most people a lifetime.

 

About the only food I don’t particularly like is radishes. Everything else? Put it on my plate, pass me some ketchup and stand back.

 

In my travel over the years, I have eaten all sorts of food that would make today’s soccer mom throw up in her designer hand bag.

 

But I don’t care. If it’s not poisonous or sitting on my plate looking at me with big sad eyes, I will consume it.

 

I’ve eaten goat and cactus tacos in Mexico. Chimole in Belize. Raw hamburger meat with my Iranian friends in college. Chicken feet. Pig’s feet. Possum and squirrel? Had ‘em all! Even boiled cow hooves.

 

Imagine telling your first grader that you put pig’s feet in their lunchbox.

 

Better yet, don’t tell them. Just pop a couple in there next to the Goldfish crackers.

 

She will be the hero of ‘Show & Tell.’

 

These days, kids just don’t have as varied a pallete as we did growing up on the farm. Apparently, they have never been told that it was chicken feet or nothing for dinner.

 

If it weren’t for chicken nuggets and Mac and cheese, most children would starve before kindergarten.

 

My 6 year old granddaughter lives mainly on pepperoni slices and grapes. I’m sure if I asked her where they came from, her response would be, “Duh, the store!”

 

And I don’t dare tell her how hot dogs are made. She may lock herself in her closet and never eat again.

 

And if somebody asked her where bacon came from, I hope she will say a pig. Otherwise, my life as a grandfather has been completely wasted.

 

So, what have we learned here? Parents, please teach your kids the origins of their food. No matter the answer.

 

Bacon comes from pigs. Hot dogs are made up of all the pieces of meat, snouts, lips and guts that fall on the floor at the meat plant.

 

Steaks come from cows. Hot wings are made from armless chickens.

 

And Brussels sprouts. Well, they come from hell.

 

I wonder what they would taste like dipped in blood pie.