Dear BBQ Chicken,

Dear BBQ Chicken,

            You have been on the pedestal of joyful moments.  My birthday meal, is there a greater honor?  Dad mixing his beer bbq sauce, the sound of metal slowly scraping circles on metal as he stood on the wooden porch.  Dry summer air, heat and sunshine, charcoal and lighter fluid burning in the belly of the black backyard grill.  Pabst Blue Ribbon—a ribbon on every can!  Dad, snapping back the tab and the cracking escape of carbonation as the thin gold bubble stream trickled into the dark red thickness and fizzled a revolt.  My brothers and I barefoot and moving easily in the freedom of summer, walnuts hidden in the prosperous green grass growing a little longer than regulation, clothes hanging, waving flags in celebration of the sun.  My birthday, a celebration of me.  The passing of a year, always looking forward.  Cake and presents, swimming, running, playing, exploring, dreaming, living, being, happy.  Youth.  A family.  A time that felt like forever.  You were there, BBQ Chicken.  We feasted on you.  Dad, master of BBQ chicken.  He left you on the grill until the moment of perfection and then he grasped you between tongs and placed you piled on yourself on a platter.  We feasted on you.  You were the one meal that we were allowed to eat entirely like pigs.  We ended the meal looking like survivors of a massacre.  There weren’t enough napkins in the world.  We were animals.  Everyone loved you.  You were delicious. 

            Lately your great grand children have been hanging around a little too close.  I’m talking about the ones who’ve gotten piled on the platter before they’ve even been plucked.  The factory farms started moving in around my family farms in 1990.  They are shameless and they stink.  They are filled with disease, sick poison, vented out through fans on steel sheds.  Chicken against chicken fighting for space while their feet take root around the wire of the cage.  The smell of all of that is interfering with our barbeque.  That smell is making us run inside when we should be perfectly content to stand outside in the summer sun and the glory of our family farm and dip you in beer bbq and grill you to perfection.  At least the city folks can still enjoy you.  

Another Helping

Dear Meat,

            I can’t let you go without taking the time to remember all the moments that earned you a place as happy food memory.  You were there, but for what reason?  Things happen for a reason and it’s undeniable, our paths have been intertwined for a long, long time. 

            You were there for my great-grandparents when German still rolled off their tongues in the new country.  You gave them a way to survive, to succeed, profit and pioneer, O’ Pioneers!  I come from agrarians and entrepreneurs. 

            The business of this new world is based on the barn yard.  If you can keep animals where you live, hunting becomes shopping, less dangerous for you.  You begin to live longer, grow taller and discover leisure time.  But I don’t need to tell you, right Meat? 

            I’m going to step in and share some stories with you because I know your family isn’t around to get you in the know.  You used to belong to a wild creature, one that had equal footing in the universe, one that tried to survive.  The wild was bred out of your line. 

            Don’t worry Meat, I’m not so short-sided that I am only looking at the domesticated you.  I know your more free roots, too.  I know fat corn-fed deer that leap at great lengths to avoid death.  I know feathers with hollow bones riding the wind and landing on a wee pond that have met their end for the love of water.  I have seen you swim in schools, alive and breathing water, falling for a hook.  I know your type—the one with a shell that protects against some things, but not against meat. 

            Please, take your time to let this all sink in.  I’m not going anywhere—not until we say goodbye together.  And who knows about after that.  I’ll try to help.

            I’m going to have to address some of your various forms individually, Meat.  It just wouldn’t be right to leave out the details.