"Liver or Steak!" [Grandpa's House]
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Here is a cute sketch of Dennis vs Steak and Liver, it is true, and I just learned about how he does not like Liver. Interesting. Rosa
I never heard the end of this story, matter-of-fact, I had it told to me so much (for 45-years), I’m surprised I forgot to write about it before. Oh well, better late than never. Oh well, here we go, we lived on Arch Street, I was ten-years old then, it was in the year 1956. I was in the backyard playing, it was dinnertime, perhaps about 4:00 PM, and my mother had come home from Swift’s and Company, a meat packing company she worked at, out in South Saint Paul, Minnesota. She was now calling us in, Mike, my brother, two years older than I, he went in first, as I gathered a few items up, at the same time I left my Fire engine outside, and slowly walked through the screened in door. Mike liked liver, and I preferred steak, matter-of-fact, I hated liver, but seldom did we get steak, and usually ended up with liver, I opted for peanut butter sandwich on liver nights. This was not appeasing my mother in the least, save, she didn’t want to push it down my throat, so she left well enough alone.
“Dinner time!” My mother called, and we both came into the house, sat at the kitchen table, as my mother went into the icebox, where below was the dried ice to keep everything cold. There on my plate was some meat. I examined it, it looked a bit strange to me, and my mother knew I didn’t like liver.
“It’s steak, don’t worry about it—just eat it.” She said, convincingly.
I looked at it again, it didn’t look like steak, it was a thin steak I told my mother, if indeed it was steak, and there was no bone or fat on it. A funny steak to be sure, I told myself, but she said it was, so perhaps it was.
I seemed always to be hyper, over stimulated in my youth; actually, it was my life style to be always anxious, restless, so it seemed. I got bored easily. So I looked at the steak, thinking, dusk was around the corner, I’d eat it quickly, and get back outside and play a bit. So I ate heartily.
“How is the steak?” asked my mother, she had a peculiar smile on her face when she said that; actually, she usually didn’t ask and it seemed to find an odd corner in my mind and rest. I looked at her and said, “It’s fine…mom,” and continued to eat and finished it finally.
“Fine… you say, so you liked the steak, without the bone?” She said.
“Yaw, its fine mom,” I said about to get up, wash my hands before I went back out side; I’d take the garbage out with me, for it was my brother’s turn to do the dishes, and me the garbage, we took turns each week or sometimes a month a time then we’d trade jobs.
“You really liked the steak Haw?” My Mother said, again.
I hesitated for a second, “Sure…” I said, grabbing the garbage bag, “it was liver I gave you (she added), see, you really can’t tell the difference between steak and liver.” At that very moment, I started to try and vomit up the liver, and she just looked at me strangely and said, “Stop that, you said you liked it.”
And I said, “You tricked me…and I bet it was steak anyway.”
“No,” she said, convincingly, “it was liver, and that proves you like liver, when you think it is steak.”
Well, what could I say, I think it was an odd tasting steak, but I went along with it, and I heard that story for the next 45-years, and I still hate it.
Written 6/1/2006 at the “Favorita,” café in Lima, Peru
Dennis Siluk's Last Articles :
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