Saturday, February 26, 2005

it does make you wonder what would be regarded as actually crossing that border and being cruel

The New Yorker has a humor piece this week that takes as its point of departure this actual passage in Jerry Falwell's autobiography:
There were times that Dad's pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed "Crip" Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip's co-workers got tired of the old man's bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip's old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad's little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delviered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it "the toughest squirrel meat" he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow. and he still grew up to be the leader of the Moral Majority.

Anonymous said...

oh, come now. that's not cruel! cruel would be calling him something like "long jump" or "tango" or "two good legs." i mean, that would really rub it in that he had an infirmity.

Anonymous said...

At least he had the decency not to call him Stumpy.

Corrie said...

I think anonymous 4:50 and 5:13 might be missing the point a little - yeah the nickname is bad, but killing, cooking, and serving him his own cat?? I say that's crueler than Stumpy anyday.

Brady said...

I thought the cruelty was getting him all excited about squirrel and then providing not-squirrel, family pet or otherwise.

Cause squirrel tastes gooooooooood.

This reminds me of a story I heard at work a couple years back: This lady who worked near me over in Ingraham was tellin' us about how she got bunnies for easter one year when she was a little kid, and they multiplied as they tend to do, so they put the bunnies out in the barn.

One day, years later, having dinner at a friend's house the lady, about fourteen or so by now, asks what this delicious meat is?!?! "Chicken," her host replies, somewhat puzzled. "Noooo, chicken doesn't taste anything like this, we have chick all the time and. . .oh my god."

High reproductive rate + bunnies generally look pretty much alike = cheap meat source.

Anonymous said...

you are right, brady. i should have said, "cruel would have been serving him a bit of his own missing leg and saying it was squirrel meat, and then persisting in calling him 'tango'"
--anonymous 4:50