by CliftonRoy

Created on: July 08, 2008

ROOF RABBITT DOESN'T TASTE TOO BAD WITH A LITTLE SALT.

Yes, the times they are a changing. The price of gasoline has increased the cost of just about everything, including food. If you don't believe it, then you haven't gone shopping for groceries lately.

Growing up the son, of a share-croppers son, we didn't have much money. We ate just about everything daddy was able to put on the table. I've always told people that if daddy bought it, caught it, shot it or ran over it, we ate it. I can remember riding through Monroe, Louisiana one early fall morning when daddy ran over a squirrel. Daddy quickly pulled over, grabbed that squirrel and threw it on the back floor board of the car. Later that night, daddy had that squirrel for supper.

Daddy was one of those folks that grew up on the farm where they had to supply just about everything except flour, coffee, salt, and sugar. I have eaten squirrel, rabbit, coon, deer, frogs and obviously fish. I have even eaten eel.

I was born in Texarkana, Arkansas, which is in the southwest corner of the state. The Red River flows through there and over the years the river has created many oxbow lakes. These oxbow lakes are created when a large bend in a river is blocked on both ends by the build up of mud and debris that has been deposited there during a large flood. As the water crosses over the land, it gradually cuts through the dirt until it creates a new channel.

One night my dad, my uncle, and myself, were fishing on one of these oxbow lakes when daddy caught this giant fresh water eel. This thing was huge, and daddy and my uncle were fighting like crazy trying to get him off the hook and on a stringer. It was the funniest thing I ever saw. The eel couldn't really hurt them but he was still kind of scary.

After they had finally subdued this monster with a few whacks on the head with a piece of firewood, dad butchered him and with-in an hour, had him cooking in the hot grease. I wasn't sure how eel was going to taste, but after the first tentative bite, I tore right in.

This is the kind of mind-set I grew up with and it served me well in years to come. In the late sixties I was introduced to the hippie lifestyle. I left the back woods of Louisiana and journeyed north to the great city of Seattle, Washington. After meeting one of the sweetest, Patchouli smelling hippie chicks you could ever hope to meet, I was forever changed.

It wasn't very long before I had moved into a commune with a bunch of real hippies that proceeded to take this nave, backwoods, country boy, and fully indoctrinate me into their culture. I was an apt student.

When you have a bunch of poor, hungry, pot smoking young people looking for something to eat, you've got a problem. Even though I was as green as I could be, I knew how to make a meal out of anything and I quickly became the head cook.

With everybody pitching in, we could usually put together enough food to feed everyone, but as it got closer to the end of the month, supplies would become less and less available. It was during one of these periods when I was laying on a bean bag chair, reading one of the old Fabulous, Furry, Freak Brothers comics, when I saw one of these guys shoot a shotgun through the ceiling of a house. A giant rat fell out and they made him eat it. They called it roof rabbit and so I thought, well, if crow doesn't taste too bad with a little salt, then I'll bet roof rabbit doesn't either.

Come on guys, dinners on the table.

If the price of oil doesn't go down soon, we may "ALL," be eating Roof Rabbit.

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