From CenTexTim, cataloging differences between Texans and everyone else:
Q: What's the real difference between a Yankee Zoo and a Texas Zoo?
A: On the cage, a Yankee Zoo will have the common name of the animal and then the scientific name in Latin. A Texas Zoo will have the common name of the animal and the recipe.
Heh. There's more truth in that than some will like to acknowledge . . . and us African boys are just as bad. The first time Miss D. and I visited the local zoo, we wandered past several exhibits of African animals - eland, zebra, elephant, giraffe, and the like. She was exclaiming about their appearance. I was telling her how many of them tasted.
The Red River Hog exhibit was her first inkling that she'd married someone . . . different . . . when it came to animals. A mother was bending over her toddler in a stroller, saying sweetly, "Look at the little piggies! Aren't they nice little piggies?" Meanwhile, three feet away, a loudly enthusiastic African transplant was telling Miss D. excitedly, "Just look how fat those are! They haven't had to run from predators in years! Man, those would taste great on the braai right now!"
The look of utter horror on the mother's face was priceless. Miss D. told me later she was torn between a desire to hit me (to make me shut up) and trying to suppress an outburst of hysterical laughter. I simply shrugged and said, "Hey, you can take an African out of the bush, but . . . "
Peter
2 comments:
Reminds me of a woman at work who said how sweet her cats were and without thinking(too much) I told her how my Vietnamese buddy said that he thought cats were a bit greasy. Yet another time I was at an art reception and there were flies flying all around the food. A dressed up rich girl told me "The flies are horrible", I told her that I hadn't had any yet but would take her word for it. Wasn't the proper response.
Funny, isn't it?.
It's 'horses for courses', so to speak.
Three centuries ago, 1984, I was in the bush, at the top of Cape York, Queensland, bloody hot-38C+ and dry as a cork.
I was RAAF, a Cpl SIGSOP, (signals operator-sigint type stuff), working with the Army.
It was an exercise, usual training 'play soldiers' shit.
Anyway, on one early evening, we got our Rat-Paks, Rations, and we ripped them open as usual, and did what is done whoever you are, wherever you are.
Separating the contents, what's best (one toothpaste sized tube of sweetened condensed milk, GOLD!,- what's good, not so good,-'swappable', and the last, shit.
Me, I kept everything, except for what I could 'swap;-trade, like, the wax-coated 10 patches of toilet paper.
What fucking idiot beaurocrat thought of that one?!.
I didn't have much to trade, until I looked over to where the young, inexperienced Diggers were throwing their rejects on the 'shit' pile.
I looked at their pile of 'this is shit, up for grabs'.
BINGO!.
Their Supermarket was open for business, and I was their only customer.
One of them actually took my toilet paper, I shopped 'till I dropped.
My magazine pouches, my packs, pockets, everything, was a disruptive pattern mobile cam restaurant on filthy combat boots!.
It got better and better.
For one tube of Nestlé's sweetened condensed milk, I could bargain for damn near anything, they were sugar Macca's kids, they had no clue.
Anyway, ONE of them eventually smartened up, he sat beside me as my Hexamine (Hexy) stove was cooking my evening meal, with curry and Tabasco, OF COURSE!, at my feet, and said.
Stu, you don't throw anything away, why?.
I said, "You and your mates have never been hungry, really hungry, have ya"?.
He looked at me, I told him.
When my twin Brother and I were 11, (1961), we lived in a house surrounded by farms, miles from suburbia, the bush.
We would sneak out in the night, crawl through the fields, my sack held in my right hand, trailing under my right arm,(stopped the scratches a bit), steal food, beans, peas, potatoes, carrots, grapes, cabbage, anything, even eggs (lucky!), from the farms around us.
We were very, very poor.
The thing is, my Brother and I had no idea that this was 'not normal', so it was no problem.
It was a fun challenge, to bring back food, and not wake up the farm dogs.
When I got a job at 14, on a horse-drawn milk wagon, at Liverpool, just outside of Sydney, and other jobs, then enlisted, I felt pretty good, bringing money into the family.
I have never been 'hungry' again, nor has my Family, because my Wife, the beautiful Mother of our two boys, has also known hunger.
We are very lucky.
Never will.
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