Universal Education: Deer Liver Epiphanies, etc.

Universal Education:
Deer Liver Epiphanies, Useful Childhood Memories, and Embracing the Po-dunk


Sometimes I’m hesitant in exposing too much detail about my personal life (which is legitimately shocking, since I often shout to the heavens about my bowel movements). But in my experiences with other Americans, it’s often hard to be taken seriously because I’m from a state that when pronounced, emphasizes any smidgen of a Southern accent. (Just try it. Ken-tuck-y. It comes out “Kinn-tuhhhck-eeey.) I did spend much of my teenage years neutralizing my accent as best I could—especially in college, when I realized that I judged others whose accent seemed incredibly Hillbilly to even me.
Luckily, Peace Corps has been much different. Some volunteers regard my accent as endearing or even normal, and I’ve stopped trying so hard to shorten my vowel sounds and annunciate all gerunds. Therefore, I’m more open with story-telling about living on a beautiful farm, eating pinto beans with pickle relish and cornbread (otherwise they taste like dirt stewed in a bellybutton), and my desperate urges for drinking tea the real way. Ice-cold and cavity-sweet.
Sometimes I think I even confuse people. I can weave a conversation with fibers of my trips to Belgium, Georgia Mud Fudge blizzards from Dairy Queen, Wordsworth’s poetry, my fear of pigeons, pitching college softball, and bottle feeding a calf in my childhood. Often, my fellow conversationalist will say, after playing the where-did-you-come-from game, “What do your parents do?”
Sometimes even I wonder if I was delivered by that cute stork or was perhaps a milkman accident, since my most bold and visible characteristics (flightiness, free spirited spontaneity, literature addiction, music preferences, and feeling unsettled with consistency,) differ greatly from my parents. It’s hard to relate lifestyles, but in the grand scheme of things, I got most of my character honest (and yes, I left out the ‘ly’ in that adverb to make a colloquialism.)
My dad has worked over 30 years in a factory, mows like his life depends on it, and manages a ginormous garden so well that even in my veggie-starved existence, I still turn up my nose at imported canned vegetables—those mushy, foul-tasting imposters. My mom is a high school secretary who missed her calling as the seamstress of my dream wardrobe and makes the best peach preserves you’ll ever taste. And whose lasagna makes Stouffer’s taste like moldy cardboard.
So maybe my own garden is still nonexistent (I lack my father’s persistence in starting tasks…and finishing them; what can I say, I have adult onset ADD!) But I’m a noted papaya jam-maker, a go-to cake-baker in my village, and, as I’ve recently discovered (which is the inspiration for this entry), my tolerance for handling raw meat is much greater than I credited myself.
Let me explain. I’ve been out of Clean Life for almost 9 months now, and in college, I rarely bought meat unless it was Albacore tuna packets or lunch meat on sale at Kroger. And in a culture where I can hear pigs being slaughtered and eat a chicken that probably annoyed me 2 weeks ago, meat isn’t appetizing to me. I don’t buy it, and I only eat it if it’s offered at the Sunday meal. If I’m given leftovers, I’ll use the cooked meat for soups or protein additions where my own lacking source comes from peanut butter.
In my recent delectable trip to Uoleva, the amazingly beautiful island in Ha’apai, I volunteered to skin and de-bone 4 kilos of chicken (thigh and drumstick attached on all of these) by candlelight, since our camping spot had no electricity. I was given a filet knife, a lamp, and a make-shift cutting board.
Immediately, my mind drifted to my kid-self squatting in the soft earth by a barn light just past dusk, when my dad had returned from a successful hunting trip. With my faithful dog by my side eating deer parts, my dirt-powdered hands poked at the deep-hued liver with a stick. “Look, Daddy! It’s like Jell-o!” I remember saying in my effortless country-talk. I never was a hunter myself, but I loved accompanying Dad on our outdoor dates through the autumn woods. I’ve always loved that wet earth smell, and didn’t even mind spraying myself with fox piss to keep my human odor from scaring off the future jerky and summer sausage. (Lord, my mouth is watering.)
Anyway, before I realized it, I was through two chicken quarters, reminiscing of Daddy-daughter dates in the woods and liver-poking extravaganzas. Suddenly I was surrounded by my PCV girlfriends, talking about how proud my Dad would be of my meat-cutting skills. A brief self-conscious moment left me at a pause, thinking of how I would possibly explain that statement…but I botched the hesitancy and started story-telling about deer liver and the beauty of juicy venison.
The funny thing? All the girls agreed. I wasn’t just a country bumpkin with jacked-up tales about playing with deer parts. It was a legitimately relative story. Within minutes we’d nearly completed a Forrest Gump Bubba- moment, when the shrimp farmer recites a lifetime menu of shrimp delicacies. (Deer steak, deer jerky, deer summer sausage, deer spaghetti, deer stew, lemon-pepper deer chops, etc.) Soon enough, my Maine friend and I were comparing stories when she found out I played with deer liver as a child. She began, “Oh my gosh, that sounds like me! I remember when my dad and brothers would hunt, and then there’d be a deer hanging from a tree, and…”
The stories lasted through four kilos of skinned, de-boned, fat-trimmed chicken pieces. After, we fed the bloody scraps to the dog.