Generally this space is devoted to keeping family and friends updated on the wit and brilliance of our child prodigies. Today, I'd like to address a more serious topic. It's a tale of innocence lost and lessons learned. Mistakes were made, my friends, and if what I share here today prevents just one of you from making the same mistakes, my time has been well spent.
It started on Friday, when Mel announced, "I have plans for us tomorrow."
"Is it a surprise?" I asked.
"Yep. It will be a cultural experience."
We headed out the next morning, full of excitement. Would we see a war reenactment? A historic homes tour? Tractor pull? Tribal dancing?
After an hour's drive, we came to Salley, SC, a tiny sleepy town* that was alive and bustling with some sort of festival. We piled out of the car. The smell of barbecue was in the air, from the several families who were tailgating.** We walked a couple blocks, arriving just in time for the beginning of the parade. A float of girls with tiaras rolled past on a hot pink float with a sign declaring them Chitlin Strut royalty. Our fearless leader had brought us to the 46th Annual Chitlin Strut!
"So, are you gonna try them?" asked Mel.
"Well, I feel like I have to, since we're here!" I was feeling adventurous. Besides, a friend I [used to] trust had told me that chitlins are delicious as long as they are cleaned thoroughly before cooking.
Mel bought two tickets, and we walked about half a mile to the building where we could trade our tickets in for chitlin plates.*** We had a choice between boiled and fried. We quickly decided that boiled pig guts would be entirely too disgusting. We figured that fried guts would taste like pork rinds, only chewier. (You see, our brains were already addled.)
We picked up our plates and looked for a place to sit. Mel peeked into a room with tables, but quickly ushered us to a bench outside. "Ugh. This bench is pretty dirty," I protested.
"We're sitting here," Mel insisted.****
We opened our styrofoam boxes and found a generous serving of the guest of honor accompanied by two slices of white bread and a couple of hot sauce packets. Time to dig in!
I took a bite, and suddenly my senses were assaulted. I looked at Mel in alarm. He looked how I felt. "Tastes like...pig barn!" I choked out.
"I can't...get past...the smell!" he spluttered.
Sad thing was, we continued to eat these things, willing them to get better. "Maybe this next bite of bowels will taste less like...bowels," we thought. It was as if we were sinking in quicksand, and the more we flailed about, the further we sank. To clarify, in that metaphor, quicksand = hog anus, and flailed about = ate more hog anus. Maggie, apparently the most reasonable of us all, wouldn't try them. Lily, with no sense memory of how pig dung smells, crunched away, unfazed.
The next time I looked at Mel, a cloud of gnats was descending on his lunch. "Hmmm..it worries me how quickly this is attracting bugs," he murmured. With that, we finally gave up and abandoned our remaining chitlins in the nearest trash bin.
We cleansed our palates with barbecued ribs, then visited the rest of the festival. As we strolled over to the craft booths, we passed behind the building where the celebrated food was being cooked. Three industrial-sized fans blasted the odor of pig mess at us. I fought to keep my lunch down. Mel went pale. It was just too soon. We pushed through our PTSD and made it through.
I learned many things on Saturday. Foremost, I learned that nothing will erase the memory of a delicious Thanksgiving dinner like a mouthful of hog entrails. It's a taste that can't be un-tasted.
In the years ahead, I must make peace with the fact that there are now several things I will be unable to do without nausea. Among them are:
- Driving through certain spans of Wisconsin countryside
- Visiting a county fair
- Reading Charlotte's Web
- Reciting "This Little Piggy"
- Writing cautionary tales about the Chitlin Strut
Readers, I beseech you...please learn from our mistakes.
_____________________*First warning - No cell phone signal. They had lured us to their backwoods town and attempted to kill us with vile vittles, and there would be no trace once our families began looking for us.
**Second warning - people cooking their own food at a festival celebrating an entirely different food.
***Third warning - Long physical distance between paying for a food item and collecting it.
****Fourth warning - I thought Mel had steered us outside because the room was full, but he later admitted that once he got a whiff of the place, he knew we were in trouble.
