O Fried Chicken Ye Tuna O' The Land

There was no egg wash or batter with corn flakes and bread crumbs. Mom would just coat it with a bit of flour and throw it in a cast iron skillet in rendered bacon fat that she got from 5 inches away on the top of the stove in a mason jar. Dad made fun of her for saving things such as bacon fat and leftovers in general. Dad hated leftovers. Of course Verna, dad's mom, did the same thing. So dad saw it as a sign of poverty because dad grew up poor. So mom would say, "Well at least we didn't have to eat field corn." "We didn't have to eat field corn! We liked the lack of flavor!" This exchange, as predictable as sunday dinner, made mom and I laugh as if no one was ever going to die ever, not even the dogs.

It should be noted that the chicken mom grew up eating was alive shortly before it hit the pan, which is why whenever we moved around one of the first things she always looked for was a good butcher with "connections".

Now frying chicken in bacon fat is probably something that those genius nutritionismists would look down upon in scorn and condescending assholedness because they know everything there is to know about food, namely, that food is nothing more than the collection of a bunch of chemicals. Do not dispute them or you will have to punch them in the head.

Now eating chicken fried in bacon fat just after watching tv all day and just before drinking beer all night may indeed not be the ideal diet. But most of my and your people come from those whose day went from sunup to sundown, then started again at sundown and went to sunup in the winter on account of livestock, who are like children in their neediness but are much more worthwhile and are nicer people with non-psychotic tendencies, unless they're chickens. So my people, needing fuel as much as their horses, then their tractors, did eat things like boiled potatoes doing the butterfly in a lap pool of butter and salt. Grandpa Kading's favorite lunch was cold chicken leftover from last night's supper. During planting and harvest my mom would take it out to him and his brothers to save time. Their farms weren't at all huge by today's standards, but "making hay while the sun shines" wasn't just a metaphor and actually has its origins in farming, if you can even believe that!

So cold chicken, also called by many "the lobster of the midwest" (where "many" means "me"), with it's high fat content, protein and other chemicals we need to live (oh you nutty nutritionistas!), was the perfect fuel for men who smoked and washed their hands in gasoline and died at 63.

Rambling a bit here. I've been on a 2-week Kentucky Fried Chicken binge. It's the gravy.

Mom liked it when I rambled on the phone. Today is her 72nd birthday. She was 10 times smarter than all her kids combined. My siblings would agree with this tacitly, believing in their hearts that this couldn't possibly be true. Problem is, shit-for-brains, it was and is true. And it's your sense of self-importance and unearned arrogance that prevents you from realizing it and therefore renders you incapable appreciating who she was. Idiots. It's always the baby of the family who bears the brunt of inconsolable loss. But I'm learning to bear it gratefully.

Nota Bene: When my sister had the idea of sauteing chicken without the skin, without the skin, and in a non-fat substance with the look of snot, dad tasted it and said, "Perhaps it would've been better had you just boiled it." My dad was funny without being mean. Most of the time.