You might think that I am being overly facetious when I say that I was starved as a kid, by my parents, and that I might be just remembering it wrong, and that it didn’t happen to farm kids in rural Idaho… but I’ve got the data to support this and you would be wrong. Growing up we never had any fun foods. Everything was the drudgery of “gruel” and the “good for you” foods. I’m sure we worked from predawn to dark every day. There were no McDonald’s, or Wendy’s just down the street- this was prior to the explosion of fast food. We lived in the country and other than driving a tractor to town, my bike would have been the only way to get to these establishments and my bike didn’t have a seat. All of the good stuff was like hundreds of miles away, in Boise, or it might as well have been. These places were not place’s that my mom believed in or would take us.…. I don’t think we even had a TV; can you imagine that? Domino’s wasn’t invented and the only time we went to pizza was after the season banquet party in little league football. We only would get foods like “vegetables” and “homemade” from scratch stuff or produce from the garden. The concept of left-overs was as foreign to me as living on the moon, they were as rare as good sense in the US Congress. It just didn’t happen. The only exception was oatmeal, that seemed to be in large enough quantities for a second helping if one wanted- I did not want however.
My parents, every once in a while, would buy cold cereal, but that was like winning the lottery—it usually was consumed in 1 setting by what seemed like a hoard of hungry mouths, like it had never been seen by human eyes before. I believe we had a resource limited mindset at the time. There was never going to be another incident of a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box to grace our house again, so best eat up now!! Cold cereal was built in a vacuum and never lived in the real world… fruit loops were in the realm of unicorns and didn’t exist in what we thought was reality. Mothers seem to have an aversion to sugar and happiness- but maybe it was because they saw the results of the dentist office visits…. Like that even matters, right?
My mom seemed to have higher aspirations in life than what food represented to us smaller humans that are sometimes referred to as children or kids, and it seemed and that food priority and eating was lower on the pyramid than her artistic endeavors. I had an aunt years later admit to me that my mom used to marvel to her that she could make food stretch (I’m sure this was accomplished by using fillers such as sawdust or silage). And if you think this is hyperbole, just ask my sisters. They now overdo any food get together with larger amounts of table fare. I think this was to compensate for the guilt and to balance the system of our winters of want. Looking back at the time I didn’t know that this wasn’t the way everyone was treated—such is youth. That is until I went over to a friend’s house and saw how the other half lived and then I realized that I really was being starved by my parents.
My friend Dave’s family had recently butchered one of their hogs. I didn’t even know what bacon was or where it came from. I might have read about ham at one point in a Dr. Seuss book and the only time I had experienced a pork chop was in the form of a few cubed pieces placed on a plate, surrounded by mountains of vegetables and the left-over oatmeal from the earlier part of the week. I thought that hogs were raised in 1×1 cubed portions. One might get 3 to 4 little pieces at dinner and that was just how it went; who knew that there was a thing called a “whole portion”. While over at Dave’s place they asked me to join them for dinner. I think they saw my gaunt bony frame and figured that I was the closest thing to a starving African child and took pity on me. As they were serving the food, they passed the plate that had multiple pieces of meat all stacked up on it—they were called pork chops and they offered me one. With a stated look of amazement, I, without thinking, shot back, “you mean I can have whole one?!”. Something must have triggered in my mind that day. One does not have to deal in fractions of protein at the dinner table and vegetables aren’t necessarily stated in terms of multiples either. There can be a whole pork chop and one ear of corn; you don’t have to compute this crazy new math with thirds of this and multiples of that—that being said oatmeal should be the only exception- that one should be stated in micro grams.
I was in gastronomical bliss, I felt like I had reached food enlightenment that afternoon- I had actually had a whole pork chop all to myself; it was a pivotal point in my life. No parrying of forks and knives to fend off the Mongol Hoard that wanted one of the 3 pieces which were allotted to me all cut up into cubes and told, “that was a pork chop”. No, I had actually seen a whole pork chop, a real one, and it was good. Maybe that is why knowledge is so dangerous. Once you know what a whole pork chop is, nobody can pull the wool over your naive eyes and tell you something different—like 4 cubes is not a whole-anything, no siree.
Hours later I went home and before thinking if it was a good idea, I ran up to my mom and proclaimed that I had had a whole pork chop for dinner…. I was gleeful and satisfied. I’m not sure I understood the look she gave me, whether it was satisfaction or jealousy. I look back now with a certain level of appreciation of what it takes to feed those that do not have ends to their hunger and that not all “happy food” treats you happy, years later, but she did ask me if I wanted some leftover dried oatmeal. I politely accepted, but while her head was turned, I stuck the lump in my shoe and later deposited it under the stairs where all the previous dried lumps of oatmeal were deposited… but that is an entirely different story.