Go Whole Hog!

My family's philosophy when I grew up was, Anything worth doing is worth doing whole hog. Go long, go deep, or go home. Lukewarm doesn't cut it, we'll spew you out of our mouth.

Now I'm old, and kids come to me for advice. (It's true, here and there you find stragglers.) And I tell them, much like Joseph Campbell's "Follow your bliss," whatever it is, go whole hog! They look at me, with doubt in their big innocent Walter Keane eyes. But I get a stern look on my face, and in my agitation point toward the door, snarling, "Now!"

I've been going whole hog all my life, and except for the dangers of always being ALL IN, it's been a fairly good ride.

But, let me say, I used to have a secret grudge against some in my family. Even though we believed in going whole hog -- and this is literal -- I'd still catch them buying half an animal. Know what I mean? That's one of three things: Shortsightedness, absentmindedness, or hypocrisy. I don't think it was hypocrisy, because they still went whole hog in everything else.

I'd think, "What's the use of buying half a hog or beef? Especially if it means letting the other half go to waste. Buy the whole thing!" And lockers back then were meant to handle the whole thing. These were people who went through the Depression. When times were good they built meat lockers like you wouldn't believe, the size of football fields.

In more recent years, though, as you'd probably guess, some of our sicklier friends stopped eating vast quantities of meat, and that didn't help. Guys at the locker threw up their hands and went out of business. The enormous freezer units were pulled out -- electricity also went up, taxes went up on the larger buildings, etc. Leading me to one conclusion: Life is nothing but a big conspiracy to screw us out of decent sized meat lockers.

There were still folks who needed lockers -- thank God -- but they had to do with smaller ones. My family, I regret to repeat, had a part in this devolution, buying half an animal when a full animal would've been better.

You never know what your actions might be if you don't go whole hog. But I've seen it happen. That's one of the benefits of old age. The wisdom of going whole hog. The chief detriment is they think you're crazy, depriving themselves.

A long-haired (bald on top) guy marches around the square with a protest sign, "Buy the whole animal." But across the lawn, a bunch of PETA women are stripped naked and painted like tigers. You tell me, who draws the crowd? The old man can do nothing but go home in tears. That, and prepare himself for even smaller lockers. Tell you what I'll do, I'll double down on buying personal freezers, energy crisis be damned!

Sorry I went on and on about it. There's very few things I care passionately about; meat lockers just happens to be one of them.

Anyway, people come to me. And that's what I say, Go whole hog. The ironic thing is, I myself have never ventured very far from my old comfort zone. But when I chose this path, I went whole hog. And so here I've been, in my comfort zone, at my grandparents' old place, vegetating and chilling, chilling and vegetating, but always doing it, strictly, whole hog.

Hellbent for Leather or Swaying toward Lavender

I've never been an absolutist, that you have to be either Hellbent for Leather or Swaying toward Lavender exclusively. I hear some of them saying that and I just have to laugh. Instead, my conviction has always been, sometimes you may be one, sometimes the other, and sometimes, although it's rarer, you can be both at the same time!

In holding this opinion, of course I know I'm in the minority. Making me -- obviously -- more a Swaying toward Lavender guy than a Hellbent for Leather, but watch out -- I'm frequently Hellbent for Leather, so it's not like you can put me in a box and keep me there!

In my defense, I've always been that way no matter what method you use to describe personality types, and I'm not likely to change now. I just happen to think folks are more well-rounded (or varying) than many of us can believe. Although, as you might expect, it's those who are predominantly Hellbent for Leather who tend to keep the more absolutist points of view. Leaving us predominantly Swaying toward Lavender types as the ones holding up the banner of "To Each His Own ... Depending."

How do I feel about the absolutist types? In my more Swaying toward Lavender moods, naturally I completely understand. But in my more Hellbent for Leather moods, I'd frankly like to take a leather strap to their hide and beat them to a bloody pulp, or to a better understanding, whichever comes first. Lest anyone be concerned by my statement, know this, my Swaying toward Lavender nature keeps me from acting on it. Unlike the definite Hellbent for Leather types, who frequently lack all restraint. The prisons are full of them.

It's one of the interesting things about personalities, how we got that way. Maybe we were born that way, or maybe it's our social environment. Take me again, as an example. A lot of the folks in my family were Hellbent for Leathers through and through. Grandpa had that Hellbent for Leather thing through and through. But he was a country boy, raised in tough times, having to struggle through World War I, the Depression, and digging outhouse holes for a living. The crowd he ran with was the same, Hellbent for Leathers, so that was that.

Grandma softened him up somewhat -- being a city girl with sisters and so a definite Swaying toward Lavender. That affected my mother, also a Swaying toward Lavender. But Mom was a mix, and that's partly how I got the mix -- as well as a conflicted personality. It's like this: Mom was 60-40 Swaying toward Lavender, Dad was 62-36-2 Hellbent for Leather, the 2 being undecided. Dad was great, but it was that 2, small as it sounds, that was the wildcard. That damned 2's sent me into a tizzy more than once! Particularly when my Swaying toward Lavender is waxing, my last bit of waning Hellbent for Leather is sometimes too much for me to take; I hit that tiny patch of paternal indecision on the downswing and the slick spot puts me on my ass.

Please, though, I don't want you feeling sorry for me. Because I had only two parents and a happy home. There's lots of people who don't share my good fortune. And unless they've managed some real personal diligence -- and this advantage is obviously more for the Hellbent for Leathers -- they can be so overcome it's ridiculous. That's the tragic side of Swaying toward Lavender; it can so easily get out of whack.

Let's say they have a father out of the home, an ex-stepfather and a current stepfather. And let's say the fathers were, respectively, strong-STL, strong-HFL, and strong-STL. That's a bad combination but all too common. In her shopping for men, Mom needed to find a moderate-STL or moderate-HFL for her last hookup. But sometimes, when lust is at its hottest, she won't be thinking clearly, particularly if she's reacting to one of the first two men; so instead of splitting the difference (picking a moderate) she foolishly doubles down on one extreme. At which point it's too late.

It's the kids I feel sorry for, not the mom. As for her, my Swaying toward Lavender nature says, "Fine, live and let live," if it's not someone I have to intervene for, like a relative. As long as it's someone out there, someone I don't have to help, someone who has to stew in her own juices and suffer on her own, anonymous to me personally, even if she ends up a total wreck on the human highway, then I reiterate, "Fine, live and let live." But I can see myself really heating up if it's someone I might have to rescue. I can see myself getting very hot under the collar, my muscles suddenly bulging out, then I Leather Out, and preemptively intervene even to the point of force. That's Grandpa and Dad in me -- the killer trump being Dad's little 2 -- Grandma and Mom remain in complete occlusion till they cycle back around.

But all that's hypothetical today! Today, friends, I'm happy as can be. I'm writing this, I'm almost done. Then I'm off to meet friends uptown -- all Swaying toward Lavenders -- where we're going to celebrate together, it being Crouton Appreciation Day.

From Milk Bottles to Hawaii

I'm totally surprised I didn't think of this before. Even I could save money with this system! With the added bonus that I would get back more than I put in, interest, a dividend!

I want to get this written as fast as possible, since I'm already dreaming of the possibilities. Then I'll have another glass of milk and get my bags packed. I'm just wondering, When you get to Hawaii, do they literally have a lei for everyone who gets off the plane?

OK, I'm looking at my milk bottles, and, let's see, 8 x $2.75 deposit = Over 20 bucks! And a couple of these I got when the deposit was $2.50, so I've already made 50 cents interest. If I keep drinking milk, and never take my old bottles back, and the deposit goes up to, say, 3 or 4 dollars, that's a lot of interest. I could probably drink a bottle a day -- a half gallon -- it's that good. In a week, with the current $2.75 deposit, that'll be $19.25 saved, and I've never seen the deposit go down. The stock market, yes.

This is so great I need to clear off shelves in the garage. It's glass gold! Finally, a collection with a payoff. With the old records I sold, the guy talked me so far down I was paying him to take them. But when you get to the store with a milk bottle, it's always the going rate. They never look at you funny.

If I keep going at this rate -- thank God for calculators and human intelligence -- a bottle of milk a day for a year, I'm saving over 1,000 bucks! OK, for three years, that's close to 1,100 bottles. If I put $2.75 in each one, and the deposit suddenly spikes to $3.25, not out of the realm of possibility, that's around $550 more. I couldn't get that at the bank. In fact, the bank's like the record guy: I'm paying them to use my money.

Oh boy, as long as the storage space holds out, and I have other collectibles I can throw out to make room -- including Grandma's old Dionne Quintuplets crap that no one remembers. There's some memorabilia that took a nosedive! She should've collected plates and knick knacks from the Titanic -- the market's unsinkable.

There could be, however, one rub, maybe two. First, there's the store. They're definitely OK with bringing in one or two bottles. Or a few more. But what are they going to do if I show up with over a thousand? I can picture the look on their face: confusion, anger. Suddenly there's a conference of managers over by the wall, out of earshot. One of them has a dirty apron. He's wiping his hands and shaking his head, glaring at me.

I'm standing there. The line stretches to the meat counter and a mile out the back door. Me, with compassion for the suffering, I'm sweating. It took me two hours to lug the bottles into the store. I've arranged every available cart into one long wagon train. The clanking glass sounds like a plague of heavy metal locusts. 

Finally, the guy with the apron -- who seems to be waving in some backup -- tells me the basic problem. I erupt in anger and end up in prison. As they're gassing up the gas chamber, I get one last meal, and one last glass of milk, unfortunately 2%, not whole.

The other potential problem is with the dairy itself. Little dairies that put out this milk with the fancy deposits aren't prepared for anomalies like 1,000 bottles from one customer. They're so small, something like three bottles is too much, but of course they can't complain. Having a 1,000 bottle spike might actually shut them down.

And then there's the interest. Their bottom line is so tight, they'd have to lay off a dozen people and forty cows to pay it. Factor in, too, because the 1,000 bottles were missing from their return cycle, they had to buy 1,000 new ones. That took money. And now they have no room for the added returns, blah blah blah...

To which I say, with full understanding of how I screwed up everyone's precious system: "Cry me a river! Oh, boo hoo. The poor employees are going to all die, aren't I a horrible person? You have to lay off cows? Let 'em work on the pig farm! They could use the change of scenery! And pigs like milk, probably. Let 'em nuzzle up against Bossie. Maybe she won't be so bossy when she finally has to give up the security of her own little barn, and all the fancy milk spigots. I say, 'Go ahead, lay 'em off, give them a gold bucket for retirement!'"

And to the store -- OK, I'm pissed; I want to go to Hawaii -- I say, "This is one hell of a way to treat a paying customer! My family's shopped here for generations. You weren't complaining when we carried you through the Depression. We could've been lined up at the courthouse, getting handouts like everyone else. But Grandpa hunted, and sold furs on the black market, giving us enough money to buy your damned groceries! Oh yes, how soon we forget! That's when milk became my family's favorite drink, because when everyone else's bones were crumbling and the streets were full of decaying skeletons, my family's bones were fortified with calcium. It was my family, then, that had the energy to clear away the dead and disinfected the whole stinking place. If it hadn't been for us, all this town would be good for is tumbleweeds, and probably most of those would be crummy."

Bottom line: Full speed ahead, I'm packing for Hawaii! I'm going for it! A half gallon today, another tomorrow, this is how I'm saving money from now on. And if they don't like it, well, I'll be ready.

How Easy Do Rabbit Heads Pull Off?

I have a bunch of rabbits in my yard. I see them everyday. They haven't been thinned out now for generations, meaning rabbit generations. Grandpa used to make traps for them, and we'd eat a lot of rabbit. But since his death, I have pretty much given up the old ways. Now I eat store-bought food, and I can't think of the last time the store had rabbit.

I used to go hunting for rabbits. Of course this was an activity that came from my grandpa and the other male members of the family. We'd get up bright and early, between September and February, and head out to the ditches in the country. You needed a .410 shotgun for rabbits. But you couldn't legally have your shotgun already put together in the car, so you needed to stop, get the gun pieces, put it together, and get it loaded, and hope, in all that time, that the rabbit wasn't already gone. Rabbits must be very dumb, because we'd still get lots of them.

As for the skinning of a rabbit, naturally it was the same whether you shot them or caught them in a trap. The first thing you do is pull their head off. And it's remarkable, but there's nothing easier in the world than pulling off a rabbit's head. You put it under your shoe or boot, holding it by the back legs, and pull. You don't even need to strain yourself, because their heads come off like they're held on by a single thread. Nothing easier. Maybe waving hi.

These days, to tell the truth, I hate killing anything. The other day I destroyed the appearance of an iPod player to rescue a gnat. That's how much I hate killing. Although, to be honest, I've killed a few bugs that have suddenly landed on me. It's just an instinctual reaction, happening just that quick, and didn't come from my considered judgment. A small spider was in the sink and I was very considerate of its well-being. But back then, we ate rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, turtles, raccoons, 'possums, and every variety of fish. I was raised by people who lived through the Depression. We ate dandelion plants from the yard! And it was all good, too...

That meant I'd personally get a rabbit every now and then. And it was actually not that disagreeable to pull off their heads. They're obviously designed to come off easily. God knew they'd be way down the food chain, so why give them good neck muscles? Connect them with the sinew equivalent of Scotch tape and be done with it. A rabbit gets up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack and trips over a rock ... whoops, lost his head!

I said that about God and the food chain. That might be the real story on rabbits' heads. But there's other critters down there with them, squirrels and fish come to mind, and their heads are on good and secure. I can't remember what we did with squirrels, but obviously their heads don't come off as easily as rabbits, because that's something I would remember.

Rabbits' heads are barely attached. We can go our whole lives without seeing another human decapitated. Not rabbits.