Humor

Encountering the Cat for the First Time

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A Chicago Boyz discussion about cats reminded me of a passage in Robert Carse’s book The River Men…I was going to post it but didn’t have the book available. Now I do, so here it is belatedly.

Brother Gabriel Sagard was a French missionary working in what is now Canada. In the winter of 1624, he stayed with the Huron Indians, and in appreciation of their hospitality he invited them to a feast at the nearest convent. For each of his Huron friends he selected an appropriate gift–for one of them, the captain of the canoe which had brought him from the village to the convent, he chose a large house cat. These Hurons had no prior experience with cats.

This good Captain thought the cat had a rational mind, seeing that when he was called, he would come and play with one, and so he conjectured that the cat understood French perfectly. After admiring this animal, he asked us to tell the cat that he should let himself be carried home to his country, and that he would love the cat like his own son. “Oh, Gabriel!” he cried, he will have plenty to live on at home! You say that he is very fond of mice, and we have any amount of them. So let him come freely to us!” So saying, he tried to embrace the cat; but that wicked creature, who did not understand his way of caressing, immediately thrust out all his claws and made him let go quicker than he had clasped him.

“Ho, ho, ho!” said the good man. “So that’s the way he treats me! Ongaron ortischat! He’s ugly, he’s bad! Speak to him!” Finally, having got the cat with a great deal of trouble into a birchbox box, he carried the him off in his arms to the canoe, and fed him through a little hole with bread that he had received at our convent.

But when he tried to give the cat some sagamite, to his despair the cat escaped and flew up on a tree and they could not get him down again. And as far as calling him down, nobody home (personne a la mason); he didn’t understand any Huron, and they didn’t know how to call a cat in French, and so they were forced to turn their backs on them and leave him in the tree, very unhappy at losing him, and the cat very worried about who was going to feed him in the future.

Do Not Mow

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A family member sent me this great photo that I thought I’d share. The sad part was that I stared at it a bit before I got the joke. Maybe I am getting slow…

Cross posted at LITGM

Possibly the Most Negative Theatre Review Ever

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Sometime in the early 1800s, Goethe was walking a secluded, narrow path which led to a mill. There he met an (unnamed) prince, and the two fell into conversation about many subjects, including theatre and particularly Schiller’s play “The Robbers.” The prince’s comment about this work was:

If I had been the Deity on the point of creating the world, and had foreseen, at the moment, that Schiller’s ‘Robbers’ would have been written in it, I would have left the world uncreated.

(from Conversations with Eckermann)

Conversation Ender

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A friend of mine posted the above on her Facebook page today. She is an extremely nice person, but believes in nonsense like accupuncture, and the vaccinations are bad for you woo-woo, and other things like that. She is also into all natural foods.

The above reminded me of my grandparents (my father’s parents), who I loved very much and had many great times with when I was a young boy. My Grandmother grew up in squalor in Munich, and my Grandfather did the same in Riga, Latvia. They met in Chicago. I have some photos of my Grandmother and her family in front of their rabbit cages – they raised them for meat. They had no indoor plumbing, of course. This was just after the turn of the century. I don’t have any photos of my grandfather when he was growing up. His father was killed in WW1 and he was shifted from relative to relative. I can only assume that a camera and photos were the last thing on his mind.

I was treated to the way that my grandparents ate when I spent summer weeks at their house in northern Wisconsin (Birchwood, for those who may be interested). We ate all sorts of shit that my friend of today would simply puke on if presented to her. Processed meats, fortified grains, you name it. Coming from the places they did, although they lived a comfortable retirement, they still wasted nothing. If we had chicken for dinner, we would make soup that night or the next day out of the carcass. It wasn’t even a question, we just did it. All the leftovers went into the soup.

I think my favorite was when after a roast or something was cooked, my grandmother would take the rendered fat and wait until it solidified, then scraped it up, put it in the fridge, and hauled it out for a lunch the next day. She would simply spread it on rye bread and that was it. Take it or leave it. My grandpa would wash that down with a beer or two.

This is what people, when they were poor, had to do to scratch it out every day. My comment, which ended all of the “hell yeas!” and “I agrees” in the Facebook thread above was:

I admit I miss the lard and rye bread sandwiches my grandmother used to feed us.

Lack of perspective cracks me up at times.