I recently made comments as to the merits of Liver and Onions, of which there are none.

It is a bad marriage in my humble opinion. Onions deserve better.

Let me explain.

Liver is an organ meat. I don’t eat organ meats. I don’t eat organ meats because they are organs.
The only organs that are allowed are those that are played musically. Lest I digress, let us stick to the liver for a few moments, shall we? I know there are Humans out there among us who think Liver and Onions are quite the meal.
Like one of my friends said, “Why mess up good onions?” to which I heartily concur.

I have no issue with anyone who likes to eat liver and onions, or just liver by itself. But hear me clearly, I do not like it. I do not like it a lot. Detest may be a better word for it but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings who enjoys eating the organ that is the filter for whatever animal to whoms entrails it belongs.

Childhood Trauma to Blame?
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My Dad was one of the most intelligent human beings I ever knew. One of his favorite things was to cook. He made excellent Lasagna and Pizza, among other things.

Much to my Moms chagrin, in the process of his preparing meals he would totally destroy the kitchen. Every cabinet door would be open, every knife, fork, spoon, bowl, dish, and cooking instrument used and spread out in a holocaustic array that one could not adequately describe, but whose carnage one had to experience.

Dad also loved liver and onions. Loved it, I tell you.

And quite naturally when you love something you want everyone near and dear to you to love it too. So on occasions----(actually I know of about three times this happened in my young life) the Old Man would get a craving for Liver and Onions.

I remember the first time.

I was making my way home in time for supper (back then the rule was “have your narrow ass in this house by dark or else”) and about half a block away I smelled something. At first snort, it didn’t seem an offensive smell at all. I then discovered the smell coming from my house so I proceeded to make my way inside and when opened the front door and made my way into the kitchen, still delving into the unknown, I inquired:

“Hey Dad, whatcha making?”

“Liver and Onions.”

“OH N---!” But before I could form the word “NO” I was cut off. “You don’t have to clean your plate but you do have to TRY IT!”

When the Old Man said that, it was over. No discussion, no debate, no reprieve, no last minute call with a pardon from the Governor. There would be none of that “I ate a late lunch” or “I’m trying to lose weight for Baseball season so I can run fast around the bases” pleas for exclusion. I was the size of a broomstick, anyway.

Any other meal that I would have stared at when I was a kid (I was quite a wormy little guy) would have gotten me a lecture about “all those starving little children in Africa” or wherever. Why, oh why, could all the starving little children not have my liver? I would have been glad to donate it to them. “Try it, you’ll like it”, as the Alka-Seltzer commercial slogan went. I had a bad feeling that Alka-Seltzer wouldn’t come close to fixing the pending issue I had as the dinner hour quickly approached.

The proverbial dinner bell rung. Rang. Ringed. Er, uh, we were summoned to dinner.

With the speed of a sloth I found my barstool at the counter in our little kitchen and my supper. Liver and onions, rice, and tea to drink. I had many a meal out of rice and or white bread and tea in the past; surely I could negotiate my way around this manhole cover sized piece of liver sitting on my plate.

My siblings were in the same boat as I, and we looked at each other and then the plates. Then each other. Then the plates. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Old Man set his eyes upon us.

That only meant one thing, and that was to cut into the organ meat and taste it. I cut a piece as small as I could that would be big enough that the Old Man wouldn’t say anything and small enough that perhaps I could swallow it whole like a pill. Saying a prayer I popped it in my mouth and began to chew. I would show Dad I was man enough to eat his silly old liver and onions. I chewed some more. Nothing. The taste wasn’t good at all. It tasted like…well, like Liver.

I took a swallow of tea and continued to chew.

The Liver was being chewed but it was ten times bigger now than the piece I had originally had on my fork. I chewed faster, thinking that the mechanical action of my jaws would naturally take over and send the liver on its way. It was not to be. The liver was in the roof of my mouth, the sides, the corner, and in the front. In short, it was everywhere that I had taste buds and had begun to homestead right there in my mouth with no plan of going anywhere ever. More tea. By God I would drowned it all. I would wash it away if I had to drink a gallon of tea to do it.

Somehow, we all survived the supper.

I know that Dad was only trying to show us the way and expand our horizons. Quite frankly my horizons expanded a lot better with Peanut butter and Jelly or some Cap’n Crunch. Moms spaghetti, Fried Chicken or roast beef would have been heaven sent in a situation like this, but like I said it wasn’t necessarily a democracy at the Fisher house back then, so you just had to take the good with the bad-- or liver, in this case.

I vowed by all that was holy that If I ever smelled that smell while coming home for supper I would ditch my school books in the bushes and hide out until past dark, reckoning that even getting in trouble for being late and the butt-whipping that would ensue would be childs play compared to eating liver.

But like I said, I harbor no ill will for Liver lovers. To each their own. I do know of one purpose for liver when it’s not filtering the toxins of its owner, and that’s to use as bait for fishing.

I have to stop writing about this now. I have begun to sweat profusely and I am cold and clammy. I also have the sudden urge to floss.

Liver is the work of the devil. You can quote me on that.

"YOU MUST BE FROM UP NORTH"

I am fuming right now.

It’s not because it’s Monday, and it’s not because I had to get the tire on my car patched, nor is it the fact that I’m still recovering from my last little episode of Gout.

The incident happened on the way home. It just so happens that my main man, Pootipottamus B. Rex, and his Mother, the Boogs, are a tad under the weather. Nothing major, just a lower gastrointestinal bug or thingy, One of those things that kind of require you to be “nearer my heart to thee” to the facilities, as it were..Ahem. Oh yeah and the Pottamus has a snotty nose, cough, watery eyes, etc.

Being the loyal “Tah” and Dad that I am, I stopped off at the CVS drugstore to get a few things: Some pink stuff, cough drops, and a couple packs of gum (Himself likes gum) and a couple of Ginger Ales for the Boogs.

That’s when it happened.

Another customer in the place, a woman, and obviously ignorant beyond description, comes up to me and says (allow me a moment here to take a cleansing breath):

“You must be from the North, buying Ginger ale.”
(Long pregnant pause to allow the words to sink in..)

“EX-CUUUUUSSSE ME?!?” I replied.

“You must be from the North- Nobody buys Ginger Ale here” or something to that effect. By this time my blood pressure was rising and my head spinning and ears are ringing. No way in hell she just said that to me---and not just once but said it twice.

As the young girls say while doing the chicken head, “OH-NO-YOU-JUS-DID-ENT!!

“Madame”, I replied, raising my voice to the right amount of decibels so not only could the checkout girls hear it but also the ladies back in aisle 11 (Incontinence, laxative, and antacid) could hear it as well---“I have NEVER EVER been accused of anything so DASTARDLY in my entire life--!! I was still in shock, and my face turning red. She looked at me and tried to justify her mis-aligned perception, and she may have mentioned something about what folks in Michigan drink. Quite frankly it’s all a blur and I responded once more:

“Maam, I drink CO-COLAS. I am from the South, I am a Macon boy and we drink Co-Colas down here, even if they have “DR. Pepper” or “Orange Crush” labels on the bottle, and furthermore, I have been accused of a lot of things, some of them unmentionable, but I have NEVER, EVER been accused of being a Northerner.”

Who in the H-E-double- hockey-sticks did this woman (who was nattily dressed by the way and It just so happens there was another lady in the store who saw the way she was dressed and gave her a good going over with her eyeballs when she came traipsing her big ol’ butt in the place like gangbusters and very unladylike I might add) think she was to number one, start up a conversation with me, and secondly, accuse me of being a foreigner? I wasn’t raised thinking that it’s ok to beat on women, but I’m telling you people, this woman could be a testament to wife beating.

Clearing my throat, and becoming still louder, I continued.

“As an addendum, Madame, I will have you know that Ginger Ale is a staple of the Southern medicine cabinet. To three parts ginger ale one normally adds one part black and white movie and one part Grandmas couch and within a 12-24 hour period one is as good as new.”

I was seething. I was at a crossroads. I could continue to have “conversation” with this heathen, or I could grab my stuff and take the high road and exit the premises. I must be getting old, because I chose the latter.

It is times like this that I would love to have a tattoo on my person someplace (in this case my buttocks) that proclaims “Forget, Hell”, or “American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God” that I could “whip out” and show her that would have made her swallow her snuff or perhaps soil herself. She deserved to do both.



I am back home now, my blood pressure almost back to normal and my two sick ones are getting better by the minute. The Pottamus will be as wide open as a peanut hull before bed and the Booger has casually sipped on her Ginger ale. My wife, god love her, has soothed my savage Southern Beast and told me it would be ok, that some folks are alive only because it’s against the law to kill em. She said to forget about it.

Forget, Hell.