Squirrel's heads and other delights. Don't read if you have a weak stomach.

Bill Martino

Bill Martino

Joined
Mar 5, 1999
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Talking about the squirrel's heads got me remembering some things a few might find interesting -- or maybe disgusting but truth is truth so I'll share a few of these thoughts.

I was born in 1933, probably the worst year of the great depression. I can remember when our rent was three dollars per month and you could buy a couple of pounds of round steak for ten cents. A hamburger, coke and french fries at the local cafe ran 15 cents.

Dad was making $30 per month working on the WPA and damned glad to have that job. He was without work for almost two years -- zero -- zip -- nothing. Remember the Argentinians just revolted when unemployment hit 18 or 20 percent. Here in the US in 1933 it was 25 percent or greater.

What happens when you don't have any income for two years? You do a lot of hunting, fishing and gardening (and praying and borrowing if you can find anybody who will loan you ten dollars) and learn to eat many things that many would consider strange. Dad did just this.

One of his favorite meals was scrambled eggs and brains and it really didn't matter to him what sort of brains. Squirrel, rabbit, pig, possum, racoon, cow -- if it had a brain Dad would eat it. I sometimes wondered if he didn't throw a little coyote brains in the pan if there was nothing else available.

I remember once he came home happy. He'd found a road kill possum (a veritable jackpout -- didn't have to spend a penny for a 22 long rifle to kill it!), stopped, tossed it into the trunk. He skinned and gutted it and baked it in the oven. When it came out it looked just like a dead dog to me that had been baked -- legs sticking up in the air, all black and nasty looking. Mom vomited. Dad ate as much as he could. I ate some beans and cornbread.

Poor people have poor ways.

But confession time. I didn't learn my Dad's eating habits although perhaps I should have. He'll be 90 in a month and is in better health than me.

Years ago when my old Sioux pal, George Horse Looking, who lived up on the Rosebud Rez invited me over to his place for a dinner of good dog stew I had to beg off.

So much for squirrel's heads.
 
I came along at the end of '34, and things hadn't changed much. We rarely had eggs - neighbors would steal the chickens. Meat was rare, unless you killed it yourself. Until dad went to work at one of the big diesel pumping stations, for executive wages by comparison, we had a fairly steady diet of pintos, cornbread, and sometimes bacon. One of my favorite breakfasts is still a sliver of cornbread, crumbled into a glass of milk, and half a teaspoon of sugar.
 
It's good that you guys keep reminding us how lucky we are to be able to eat three meals a day and provide as well for our loved ones!
A lot of people seem to take their daily bread as something granted and not as a blessing.
I ahd to see some real poverty with my own eyes to understand it myself.
Fausto
 
Before he landed the "good" job at the diesel station (25¢ an hour) he worked on a huge commercial farm, which ran a large number of diesel tractors. We had a cabin in addition to the 14¢ he made. Mom sent me to the field, where he was working on a break-down one day, to take him his canteen (Arizona in the summer - you carried one if you worked in the open). The foreman ran me off, and threw dirt clods at me and my dog. Dad came off the tractor like the wrath of God, and left the foreman on the ground. We packed the old Plymouth and moved that afternoon. Everything we owned went into the trunk and back seat, with room for me and the Collie. The manager came after us - fired the foreman and wanted Dad back - we camped out for a time, but Dad wouldn't even talk to him. "Too much pride" was supposed to be one of my Dad's faults (according to in-laws) but I never quite saw it that way.
 
Very interesting Uncle Bill! It does make you think about how lucky we are today and I hope my kids are as lucky as I am now when they they grow up!
 
Bill

I was born in 1953 so I'm a little younger than you, BUT i can understand and apreciate where you are comming from. My dad was born in '23 and grew up so poor that a new pair of dungarees, blue jeans for the young guys, was considered dress pants. We always went to South Arkansas to help out his brother-in-law every year. Uncle DP loved squirrel brains and eggs, scrambled soft, cold leftover corn bread, and either sweet milk or butter milk. The milk depended on how much the cow gave that morning.

The whole clan gathered together to hunt squirrels. I used a .22 with a 'scope and only took head shots. Left him without breakfast and upset his whole week.

Those were good times. Both Dad an DP are gone on now. Some days I wish we were all back in the woods following a fice dog after a squirrel.
 
Thanks for responses.

Since everybody we knew was also poor we really didn't know that we were poor. At our 50th High School class reunion one of my old classmates said, "we were poor as a rock but didn't know it." She was dead right. She's a black girl from a big family and had it worse than me -- a real sweetheart and true lady in every sense of the word.

Those were tough times but it bred something in the folks who survived it I think that is best defined as "character."
 
Indeed a very fascinating time...when people knew what a penny meant and didn't shop with plastic, leaving the bills for others to pay , thanks to the miracles of the covenient chapter 7].

Though I am much younger and was lucky enough to be born in better times, I was always raised with the philosphy " If you don't have it, don't spent it!". Coming to this beautiful country, I felt like a dinosaure because everyone around me was going crazy on the plastic and did not understood my position....until I met an older gentleman who like you guys had been raised on "exotic " cuisine. The one thing that stayed with me from our conversation was that he mentioned that he never had any dislike for any type of food after these times. What ever came to his plate was good to eat as long as it was dead and cooked. His parting words to me still ring true: "Should hard time ever come back, You won't have to worry because you can take it. The first to die will be the spoiled brats who won't be able to do without"

No need to tell you ever since our talk, I have always thouroughly enjoyed every thing that landed in my plate ....as long as it's dead and cooked!

Thanks for sharing your experiences.
 
I've always told my kids that "Protein is Protein" no matter where it comes from!! I remember my mom telling stories about her dad in the Depression. Grandpa never wasted a thing off an animal. Brains and scrambled eggs, head cheese, even using the bladder of a pig for a balloon ball for the kids! Not to mention using the small intestines for "casings" for blood sausage. I would shy away from brains, however. There have been medical reports about people suffering from slow acting viruses contained in the brains of animals, especially squirrels. There were cases of spongiform brain dementia in people in Arkansas (I believe) who ate squirrel brains. These viruses are not killed at the temperature of cooking.
 
Pull up some pinto beans and cornbread (I'll pass on the brains - already have a bad HIKV infection :)) One note of caution - Several who have medical credentials have retreated from this group, shaking their heads (mental health professionals, mostly - docpat, we still miss you). The working formula here is "You can't cure them, so just join them". :D An occasional tutorial on "home stitching" might be welcomed, though.
 
Welcome, John. You're an old timer with HI but new to the Cantina. Glad to have you. We did the same thing as your Grandpa. Headcheese, guts for sausage casing -- and chitlings. Nothing wasted. We didn't have dogs or cats to help out -- couldn't afford to feed them.

When I started school in 1939 I remember about half the kids in my class showed up for school barefoot. If you are too young to ascertain the reason for this it was because the kids either had no shoes at all or else had only one pair which they wore to church on Sunday. Those were not easy times.

An old friend a year older than me who went to school with me in Cherokee came to visit me a couple of months ago. He's rich today -- owns a string of 134 carpet stores. I remember once when he was a kid he spilled something on his new pair of shoes and started crying. I asked him if he remembered this incident and tears came to his eyes. His reply was, "Billy, a new pair of shoes in those days meant more to me than the new 2 million dollar home I just bought last year."
 
Can't say we were poor... Grew up in a rural midwestern area, in a blue collar family. But both parents are full European (Polish & Italian). So we ate the 'unusual' parts by way of tradition. These included; brains, tongue, tripe, heart, pig's knuckles, blood sausage, ect. Plus they both loved fish, eel, octopus/squid, crayfish. Dad hunted (rabbit, quail, pheasant) and fished, so catch of the day got cleaned and cooked. Actually this all had a beneficial result -I like most foods. Whereas the 'meatloaf and mashed potatoes' neighbor kids ran away from an invitation to dinner. It always makes me laugh and disgusts me how finicky many people are with their palates. But getting back to the topic... Mom routinely prepared a french favorite, boiled sheep's brains. This was cooked and served in it's entirety, PLOP, onto the plate. (Even now the thought evokes queasiness. Guess she thought eating brains would make me smarter ...Boy, did I prove her wrong :D
 
Nothing there Dad wouldn't absolutely relish. I guess none of it hurt him much since he'll turn 90 on Ground Hog's day and is still kicking.
 
Boy do these stories bring back memories. I was born in 56 but we didn't have much on the farm. I do remember once gitin a whipin for not re-filling the jar with water to prime the old pitcher pump out back. I had to go to the ditch and fetch some water for priming and cut a switch for the whipin( I'm sure some of you remember cutting a ring around the switch so it would break quick, my dad told me years later he had tired the same thing). It was 63 before we had running water in the house, but we still had the old outhouse until 65, when dad and a couple of friends built our house with all the fixtures, hot water, a bath tub, and a flush toilet. Brains and eggs were a regular here too, milking the cow and makeing butter, sweet milk and cornbread was like a desert. Rabbit, squirrel, fish, frog, or fowl we ate them all. I remember everyone got together in when the weather got cold for hog killing, that was one thing us kids could stay out of school for. About the only thing that ever bothered me much was the time I stayed with a friend and they had chicken and dumplings and I got the head and that gold eye lookin up at me from the plate.
I couldn't ever get use to "hogging" catfish either, somthin about reaching in a hole in the ditch bank and feeling for a catfish, if it was slick you would grab it by it's lower lip and drag it out, if it wasn't slick take your arm out slowly it might be a snake. Like ya'll said we didn't know we were poor we did the best with what we had and didn't sweat the small stuff, it made a family close. :)
 
Great stories all.

My granddad told me tough times built tough people - he was present when the Japanese army couquered Malaysia (then called Malaya) during WWII. Being chinese and thus highly distrusted by the Japanese occupation forces (they were already at war with China), he had to beg and steal to feed himself and his family. He was caught twice by Japanese soldiers: the first time he escaped punishment, the second time they beat him half to death. Never really forgave the Japanese for those hard times. A real character, my grandad, who passed on a few years ago. He left me with a whole lot of stories and memories, for sure.

If he was still around, he could teach those buggers on "Survivor" a thing or two about real survival...

Andrew Limsk
 
Red, we may have had it tough here in the 30's but I'm certain it was a regular party compared to what your Grandfather went thru, God bless him.

Keith, the only difference between your farm in SE MO and ours was we were located 3 blocks east of the Cherokee water tower and water works so we had "city water." This meant a "hydrant" near the back porch which we had to keep wrapped with a 6 inch layer of rags and wire in the winter to keep it from freezing. All else was the same --outhouse and no running water in the house. Kitchen had wood burning cookstove. House was heated by wood burning stoves but we used coal mostly because it was easier and readily available and cheap. We mined coal in the area and when things were really tough you could take a couple of gunny sacks up to the railroad, walk along and pick up enough coal along the tracks that had fallen off coal cars to keep warm for a couple of days -- called "picking coal."

In SE KS we called "hogging" catfish "noodling."
 
Been there and done that too. There were a few places where we lived when I was a kid that had no running water in the house nor electric.
Then the old man lucked into a deal on a 33 foot house trailer that had been custom made for a couple.
It had some really neat features that saved a lot of space in it. The main bedrooms bed folded into the back of the trailer and the table folded down from underneath it. The benches the bed sat on were the benches to set on when a meal was served.
It even had a 10 gallon electric hot water heater in it.There wasn't hardly enough room for the huge old Philco radio we had so dad went down and swapped it and some cash for a br and new Hoffman that was a table top size.
I listened to all the kiddie shows on it like, "Bobbie Benson and the B-Bar-B Rider's, The Lone Ranger, and some others I can't recall the names of. Then as a family we listened to all the favorite old time shows.
Good times as it taught kids how to be quite, Really Quiet!!!!!!!!:)
I was only about 3 or so when the old man bought the new radio and I can still remember Mom saying, "That won't have a good sound. The speaker isn't big enough."
After mom heard it she fell in love with it.
I still have it, mom was gonna throw it out because it had broken. I had it fixed and once in a great while will plug it in for a while. It still sounds as great as it ever did. But ever time I plug it in I forget about the warm up time.:)

We also ate about anything the old man brought in, but most of all I remember mostly beans and taters. Still one of my favorite meals.
It seems that bacon or salt pork was always pretty cheap. I remember mom boiling salt meat for a few hours before cooling it, slicing it, rolling it in egg and flour and then frying it.
Cornbread n'gravy or cornbread n'milk were and are still favorites. It's a plus if the gravy has hamburger meat in it.
I like the cornbread n'milk as a late night snack.
My favorite breakfast or any other meal of the day is bacon n'eggs, fried potatos and pork n'beans cooked over a campfire.
Even better if it's a sagebrush and greasewood fire.:)

I had it easy compared to my folks who lived through the depression years even though we went through some tough times because of the old man. I damned sure know what it's like to be hungry, cold and broke. Mom always brought me and her through the rough timnes when the old man would pick up and leave, usually with another woman or the law right on his ass. He wasn't worth the powder to blow him to hell, but he was my old man and in spite of everything I still loved him. America was about over the rough times in 1940 when I was born.
 
this thread is a welcome opportunity to be thankful for what we've got.

I have family that was stationed in Manila during most of the '80s. They had their two beloved hunting dogs with them. But they couldn't keep their dogs in the yard to protect their place. Instead, they had to guard their dogs to keep them from ending up in a stew. Those were 30- or 40-squirrel dogs.
 
squirrel.jpg

Uhmmm, Uncle Bill... some of the Cantina residents are a little worried where this thread is going. Your not still upset over that little Heinekin 'thing are you? Just so theres no hard feelings, we all chipped in and got you something to change the mood.
 
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