Greg Laffitte
April 08, 2008 11:57 am
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Occasionally we visit neighboring chow halls, or dining halls, as they are referred to in the civilian sector. The other day I had the unique experience of dining at one of the other coalition force's chow halls for dinner.
I was looking forward to this change in "fine dining" experiences. My mother raised me properly and always said to try new things and at the very least taste something before turning it down. My mom is an outstanding cook so that rule applies very nicely at her house.
However, the chow hall workers are from the local community. The cooks try very hard to prepare our meals with an American flair but they occasionally miss the mark by a mile!
I have a preference for food prepared in the Southern tradition. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, collards, black-eyed peas and a generous serving of cornbread loaded with melted butter are my favorites. It will come as no surprise that there "ain't no southerners fixin vittles" over here.
As a matter of fact, I ate a sandwich a few days ago that contained lunch meat, which quite possibly could have come from a farm animal that previously pulled a plow. Now I am all for trying new selections, however, I tend to shy away from those ingredients which have all the makings of a sack of dog food.
Kind hearted folks these workers may be "bless their hearts," but some things just don't appeal to me. I think I also ate a piece of chicken the other day, but I am not quite sure. It was a flat piece of meat that was breaded and it was white on the inside but it certainly didn't chew like chicken does. It didn't taste much like chicken either. Mom also used to say "clean your plate because there are starving children in China." I saved a piece of the mystery meat and am trying to figure out how to ship it to Peking!
After dinner, I made my way to the garbage can to scrape my plate. There by the can sat an old, scraggly, wrinkled up one-eyed yellow cat. He obviously had missed a meal or two and was sunning himself by the garbage can in hopes of a treat. Being the pet lover that I am, I attempted to feed this mangy creature a piece of that "chicken."
All the cat did was sniff at it, roll his one eye and hiss at me. If I didn't known any better I would have thought that cotton pickin' cat had just said a few cuss words for attempting to feed him what amounted to pieces and parts of an old outhouse door. I did come to the conclusion that the cat must have had fairly good sense because one of my buddies, who will eat anything, had a double serving of "the other white meat." He consequently had to make an emergent middle of the night visit to the latrine. Bless his heart!
Last night I thought for just a fleeting moment I was back in Valdosta. My wife and I like to sit out on the front porch swing in the evening and talk about the day's events while enjoying each other's company.
Sometimes while we're out on the porch we have to listen to the neighborhood cat fights. There are a few cats in our neighborhood who seem to have trouble getting along, and I know this because of all of the wailing and carrying-on they do right before they start fighting. Well, the one-eyed garbage can cat started hollering just like those cats back home.
I happened to be playing my banjo when all of a sudden a terrible racket broke the stillness of the evening. I briefly stopped my playing to try to hear what was going on, and the cat immediately stopped hollering. I paused a minute or two then picked up where I had left off. The cat's hollerin' started again. I paused again for another minute. Hollerin' stopped. Started playing again and that cotton-pickin' cat started hollering all over again. See if I'm ever nice to that cat again!
That's about all the news that is news from deep in the heart of Afghanistan where one-eyed cats hate banjos and the "other white meat" might not be chicken. Please pass the grits.
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