Short-Writing #1

Short Writing #1 (SW-1)

Food Narrative

Assignment:

In

How We Eat

, Leon Rappoport writes, “our anxieties, aspirations, and modes of relating to others are embodied in our food habits” (59). In this food narrative, describe one of your “food habits,” how it began, and what it says about your personality or worldview. Thoughtfully consider your behavior, what may have triggered it, and what it means. Use one or more quotes from Rappoport to explain your habit.

Employ descriptive language to set the scene for readers; let us see this food habit in action. Consider how

Suzanne Winckler

“paints” the picture of chicken slaughter for her readers.

A few possible lines of inquiry include your personal experience with or approach to…

• food prejudice (p.72)
• food associations/aversions (p.62)
• etiquette and judgment (p.71)
• dieting and body image (p.66) 

Objectives:

• Probe more deeply into your relationship with food (and perhaps unearth a subject of interest for future projects)

Requirements:

• 300–500 words
• Use quotes from course readings to support your discussion
• Post to Canvas by Monday

44 THE SATURDAY EVENING POST July/August 99

SAVNGE LIFE
IJ you want to be att amnivore. you should try kiUin(.j your owti meat.

by Suzanne Winckler
n /)i/ liabfrl liiihinson

fc>.v years I butcher chickens wiih a
friend named Chuck who lives near the

farm my husband and I own in northern
Minnesota. Chuck buys chicks and
lakes care of them fur lhe ton weeks
it lakes them lo mature. I share in
the feed costs, but my main con-
tribution—for which 1 get an
eijual sliaie of birds—is to help
slaughter them.

One day last fall, ( huck. two
other friends, and I htitchered
2S chickens. We worked with-
out stopping troni 10:00 a.m. to
6:00 p.m. By the lime it was
over, we had decapitated, yutted.
plucked, cleaned, and swaddled
each bird in plastic wrap for the
freezer. We were exhausti-i(
and speckled with blood.
For dinner thai nighi we
ate vegetables.

Butchering chick-
ens is no fun, which
is one reason I do ii.
It is the price 1 pav
for being an omnivore
and for eating otlu’r
meal, like beef and
pork, for which I have
not yet determined a uork-
able way to kill.

Tbe first time I caught a chicken
to chop its bead off, I no-
ticed, as I cradled it in my
arms, thai il had the hefl
and piiabilily of a newborn
bab\. This was alarming cnotiyh. bin
when I beheaded it. I was not prepared to ^
be misteil in blood or to watch it botince nn
the ground. Headless chickens don’t run ;irouiul
The\ thrash with such force and seeming cnorilinalion ihat
they sDniL’limes Uirn hackflips. V\hi.-n I first saw this, three
things bccatne clear to me.

I reali/.ed why cultures, ancient and coriictiiiiorary. de-
velop elaborate rituals lor coping with the grisly experience
of killinii ¡ui> sentient creature. I understiind why so many
people in my largely bloodless nation are alarmed at the
thought ot killing anything (except insects), even though
they eat with relish meat other people process for tliLMii. I
saw why a small subset ol my contLMnpt>raries are so horriticii

by the thought t)f inflicting pain and causing
death that they maintain people should

never kill anything.
One risk 1 run in this sell-imposed

ftiod-izathering exercise is leaving
the inipres.siun, or perhaps even

furtively feeling. Ihat I am su-
perior to the omnivores who
lea\e the killing of their meat to
someone else. 1 don’t think I

am. Slaughtering my own
thickens is one of two op-
portunities (gardening is
the other) wlierc 1 can dis-
pense with [he layers of
anony inouN people be-

iwecn me and my food. 1
have no quarrel with them.
I jtist dnn t know who Ihey
are. They are not pan o\’
my stnry.

Killing chickens pro-
\ides narratives for gather-
ing, cooking, and sharing
Ibod in a way that buying

il Slyron)iim package of
chicken breasts does not. I re-

member the weather nn the days
we ha\e butdiered our chickens

and the friends n\er the years who’ve
come to help, wlin have ineludcd a surgical
nurse, a cell biologist, a painter ol’ faux in-
leriors, a Minnesota state representative
whn is also a logger, a zoologist, a ntirse
with Head Stan, and a former Army
medic who now runs the physical plant
at a large hospital. 1 can measure the
coming of age oï my partner’s two kids,

who were tykes the first time we
butchered chickens ten years ago
iimi who this go-round were well
into puberty with an array of
piereed bnd\ parts.

My mother, who was bnrn in 1907, belonged to the last
generation for whom killing one’s food was both a neces-
sity and ;m ordinary event. Her family raised chickens for
the purpose of eaiing them, iim! her father taught all his
children to hiinl. My sur\i\al lines nol depend »HI killing
chiekens. but in doing so I have found Ihat it fortifies my
etniiieelion to her. It also allows me to cast a tenuous f’ila-
nient back to my feral past. In 1914. Mel\in Gilmore. an

TUE SATURDAY EVENING POST

clhnobotanisi. wrote. “In savage and barbarous life the oc-
cupaiion nf tlrNt importance is the quest of fwHl.” Ha\ing
butchered my own chickens. 1 now feel acquainted with llic
savage lile.

As exhilarating u.s this may be, I do not thrill at the pros-
pect tit beheading chickens. Several days before ihc iratis-
acliim, I circle around ihc idea of what my friends and I
will be doing. On the assigned morning, we are slow lo gel
going. There are knives and cleavers lo sharpen, vats of wa-
ter lo be boiled in the sauna house, tables and chairs to set
up. apron!< und buckets to gather, an order of assembly to

establish. In their own ritual progression, these preparations
are a way to gear ourselves up. I feel my shoulders hunch
and m> focus narrow. Et is like putting on an invisible veil
of resolve to do penance for a misdeed. I am too far gone
in my rational western head to appropriate the ritual of cul-
tures for whom the bloody business of hunting was a mat-
ter of sur\ival. But butchering chickens has permitted me
lo stand in ihe black night just outside the edge of their
campfire. and trom that prospect I have inherited the most
important lesson of all in the task of killing meat: I have
teamed to say thank you and I’m sorry. >

Putting Chickens to Sleep—JFbr Good
I haven’t mei Suzanne Wjnckk-r. au-

thor of “A Savage Lite.” but 1 would
like to. Our son. Paul, sent me “A Sav-
age Life” with a note thai read. “You
will really appreciate this piece. It will
remind you of your mniher.”

Paul was recalling a Thanksgiving
Day when he came home from :i hum
and proudly pbced a pheasunt un my
kitchen table. What impressed him was
that his mother would know how to get
the wild bird ready for the oven. Paul
grew up as a city boy; his maternal
grandnuilhcr and I did liiile lo educate
him aboul countr>’ life. He just SUKKI
there. toi>kinp hungry after his first suc-
ccssliil pheitsLinl shoot.

1 showed Paul hüw to pluck ihe leath-
ers. You douse the bird in u pail of boil-
ing walcr. and the feathers pull oui cus-
ily. The small hairs thai remain tan be
removed with a lighted mateh lo un old
newspaper. By the lime the llames gci
lo your fingers, the hairs can all be
torched off. leaving a clean bird ready
I’or evisvcrating.

We had the phcasani ready for the
oven in minutes, and Paul, who had
never bctn impressed with anything his
mother did since he was in knee pants,
actually ctmiplimented me on my speedy
know-how

He later reminded me that my re-
spt>nsc wa-s. “That’s nothing! My moiher
would have done it twice as fast.”

.Suzanne Wincklcr is obviously u so-
phisticated city girl. We share a common
bond because our mothers taughi us
abitui killing one’s f«KxI when it was a
twccssity and a most ordinary event.

Like Suzanne. I have cradled a
chicken in my arms before beheading il.
1 like chickens as she d(»es.

M> sisier and 1 used to play games
with Ihe pullets (young female chick-

ens). If we put lheir heads under lheir
wings and rtxked ihem ever so gently.
they would fall asleep and lie in the sun
for what seemed tti us a very long linw
before arousing.

Sometimes we wuuld have a whole
assemblage of sleeping chickens lying in
the grass. Il seemed to do them no
harm. Afler a time, they would shake
their feathers and go back to scratching
for food.

I learned the lacts of life about
and females by watching roosters chase
hens. The hens. I ihought. gave up tiMi
easily, .^fter the conquesi. the rwisters
would quickly pursue oihers.

An interesting phenomenon in ihe
chicken house was the “broody” hen.
Wben she wi)utd lay a nesi full of eggs,
she would wani to quit laying eggs and
sil on Ihe batch lo hateh chicks. My
mother taught us that this would cause
a decrease in Ibe egg couni for tbe mar-
ket. Her remedy was to take ihe hens
from lheir nesis and place them in a
cage thut wus hung from the rafters of a

“broody hen shed.” The theory, as 1 re-
call, was tbat Ihe gcnile movement of
the cage of isolated would-be mother
hens would cause them to lorgei moth-
erhiKHl and get back lo laying a new
batch of eggs.

As a ehild. I wanted to take this mat-
ter into my own hands, and I talked my
parents into giving me a moiher hen of
my very own. I made a small dugoui
under a hollow tree and let her batch her
chicks up in the orchard, completely
away fmm the henhouse. When ber eggs
hatched, the chicks were all mine, and I
felt Ihe joy of free enterprise.

The chicks roosted outdoors up in the
trees. They perched in the irees at night,
and I tbougbt they were more beauiifui
than any that my mtuher had bought
from the local halchery.

They must have been good chickens
because when they were grown, my
Unele Ben bought ihem all from me for
what I thought was a small fortune. He
claimed they were the hest-tasiing
“spring fryers” he’d ever had.

Years later when I visiied my sister
111 Iowa, she adnumished me not to go
near the chicken hou.se. This was a new.
larger chicken house. “You would be de-
pressed: don’t look.” she warned me. I
think I knew; I suppose it was a
chicken-and-egg factory where the eggs
rolled away from the hen’s feathers as
>oon as she laid ibem. I >uppose the
eggs dropped oui of her reach tbrougb
some wire mesh. I’ll never know be-
cause I don’t want to see those hens
working that way and probably being
fed witb all manner of nuirienls lo up
their prtKiuctiviiy.

I would like lo be invited to
Suzanne’s chicken party in Minnesota
nexi year. I have a theory aboul ihe
chickens my mother killed in Iowa, as her

see Chickens an page 7H