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There was a time when I tired of earning only
what people would pay me. I got a fair wage for what I did, but sometimes a man
has to control his own destiny. Besides, at age 9 I wasn’t getting any younger.
So with a little savings I acquired a few hens,
some used equipment from an egg ranch that was going out of business, bought my
first 100 pounds of chicken feed, and went into the egg business. The venture
was an overnight success, the “dot com” of its day. OK, it kept me in pocket
change and life was good until production dropped while the labor force ate the
profits.
It was then that I learned where over-the-hill
layers go when they retire. I’d never butchered anything bigger than a trout,
though my family had owned part interest in a steer that was raised for
slaughter so I knew where meat came from. Making a buck or two selling stewing
hens and ending the grain drain was fine with me.
It turned out I didn’t have the stomach to give
my feathered employees the ax. After the first round of right-sizing I found a
butcher nearby who would dress them out for a quarter a piece, money gladly
spent.
Flash forward about 15 years to college and a
class called something like “Incoherency In The Media,” which I took to fill a
humanities requirement. The title sounded cool, but it turned out to be long on
incoherency and short on media.
The instructor was a man who appeared to have
found his dream job. He assigned a few books, then spent the rest of the
semester free-associating on whatever popped to mind. I don’t remember doing
anything with the books other than reading them.
I do recall a rant on vegetarianism and the
evils of eating meat. People should only be allowed to eat meat if they killed
it themselves, he taught. That, he knew, would drive most folks to the salad
bar.
Well, maybe. And maybe more people would walk
to work if they had to build their own car. What my vegetarian professor missed
is that not so long ago most people got their meat by dispatching it themselves,
and all that slowed them was cost and availability. I didn’t miss a McNugget
over my first experience cleaning a chicken, even if I did decide to hire it
out. I grew up to hunt a little, and wasn’t squeamish about dressing game.
We’re pretty detached from that now. Just as
most of us have only a vague idea how a microwave oven works, we don’t dwell
much on how our food gets to the supermarket. This is fine, but is it wrong to
show kids where groceries really come from?
A private school in southern California faced
that question this month after butchering a steer that was raised at the school
for that purpose. At least I guess it was a steer; some reports called it a
cow. That some don’t know the difference tells a story itself.
Whatever it was, the animal was
killed and butchered by a professional following standard commercial
procedures. Children with parental permission, some as young as 7, watched as
the butcher described what he was doing. The kids had been prepared for the
event as part of the school’s agricultural program.
There was the usual knee-jerk
hubbub by outsiders; perhaps the most idiotic was this from a Los Angeles based
animal rights activist: “Studies have shown that when children view violence
against animals, it desensitizes them to animal cruelty and makes them more
aggressive.”
Yes, it’s a well-known fact that
most gang members got their start in the 4-H.
This is violence only in the most
technical sense, part of a natural cycle that has existed forever. I understand
the need for parental permission, but if education must avoid something this
basic I don’t see the point.
© 1997- 2002 Brent Morrison
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