GREAT AMERICAN ROADKILL: Dinner Is Swerved
Dealey, Sam
THE GREAT AMERICAN ROADKILL SERIES Dinner Is Swerved by Sam Dealey highways and byways, hapless animals of all shapes and sizes lose out to man and his machine. According to the Erie Insurance...
...Thanks to the pay, so too is traveling four hours for a free meal, no matter what form it takes...
...Rabbit and deer were most prevalent, but there was also turtle, rattlesnake and other assorted critters...
...Don't write that down...
...Did I know that the "main ingredient" in this holocaust is "intense suffering...
...These days, however, for me the horse and gun have been replaced by the subway and cell phone, and the folks back home are those who use phony phrases like "the folks back home...
...There was a noise that had the sound but not the meaning of laughter...
...In a state that ranks second as the least-populated in the nation, Pocahontas County ranks as the least-populated in the state...
...Except I don't like the marsh animals," he cautions...
...66 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004...
...Apples and maple syrup come to mind, as does fishing and rafting...
...Not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but, well, you could...
...But mostly what you'll see is roadkill...
...And for those that can't kick the habit, roadkill is the best alternative," said spokesman William Rivas-Rivas...
...And then there are the , miles upon miles of scenic drives...
...was at a loss for words, and turned to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to supply them...
...But as it was, 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 THE GREAT AMERICAN ROADKILL ER1ES the whole thing just ended up being one indistinguishable cacophony...
...For parents planning a trip with small children, Peterson also compiled The Roadkill USA Coloring and Activity Book...
...Sam Dealey writes for The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C...
...As we arrived, a group of elderly sat in lawn chairs around a gazebo in the town square, watching comatose as an old fellow with a scraggly beard scratched at a banjo...
...It wasn't immediately clear which category roadkill fell under, and Gresham didn't seem to have an idea herself...
...Gresham didn't seem to have the same sense of humor as Smithson...
...a flattened patty of pancake there...
...Judging by one giant heap of feathers, even the buzzards are fair game...
...TIME WAS WHEN I wasn't such a city-slicker...
...At another, there was The Buck Stopped Here Pepper Steak...
...It's the kind of place where, if you don't want to marry a relative, you buy a bus ticket...
...According to the Erie Insurance Group, deer-vehicle collisions— or DVCs, to those in the business—account for almost 45 percent of comprehensive-coverage losses in West Virginia...
...Nobody ever came and said anything, but you hear things...
...Wildlife in Washington is largely limited to unwashed protesters and dusty pigeons that crap on monuments, and despite the cabbies' best efforts, the roadkill rate for both remains depressingly low...
...The top two reported diseases in the state are sexually transmitted...
...I asked...
...she gasped incredulously, and then grabbed my arm, Road sides...
...You'd never know...
...They're just too greasy...
...She and some folks were jawing away, talking about this and that, and, well, the joke became a reality...
...shrieking, "No...
...It will take Buck Peterson or the people of Marlinton to figure that one out...
...I'm trying to think of how to answer that question for you," she said...
...But in the beginning, they weren't very happy with it...
...Were they any less bored, their clicketyclacking might have accompanied the Britney Spears coming over the loudspeaker...
...So as delicately as I could, I pressed her on whether maybe the state perhaps had what the soap sellers might call a brand-name problem...
...Roadkill long ago lost its taboo in Marlinton, the seat of Pocahontas County, where for the last 13 years the town has hosted an annual roadkill cookoff...
...Caryn...
...And the proud parents and onlookers only beamed with approval, even when it began to rain...
...If more people ate roadkill, it would certainly alleviate the suffering of millions of animals that are dying in factory farms and slaughterhouses...
...Like most legislatures, West Virginia's was behind the o DOUBT there are many fine qualities to West Virginia...
...My father served cow brains for breakfast...
...All in all, it wasn't bad...
...High up on the hit-list is Buck Peterson, author of not one, not two, but three roadkill cookbooks, cleverly titled The Original Roadkill Cookbook, The Totaled Roadkill Cookbook, and The International Roadkill Cookbook...
...And around the square stretched a line of people, shuffling patiently past tents of roadkill contestants...
...A recent Centers for Disease Control report noted that the state's elderly led the nation in toothlessness...
...At one tent, the Coal Hollow Brothers served Buzzard Breath Maggotini, the only identifiable ingredient in which was pasta...
...But if the squeal of a pig isn't the first thing you hear in West Virginia, chances are it will be the squeal of brakes before hitting the pig...
...And there was Moorefield, a quiet, forgotten town where tatters of morning mist clung desperately to the spires of Victorian homes and the church steeple...
...Hoping to hear things, I rang up Caryn Gresham, spokeswoman for the state's tourism bureau...
...If Gresham wasn't singing the praises of roadkill, and Nancy couldn't vouch for the real thing, it was time to find someone who could...
...After a good minute of silence, I was certain we'd been cut off...
...The princess daughter of Chief Powhatan for whom the county is named might have saved the life of Captain John Smith, but the Indians seem to have done a good job of shooing everyone else away...
...But find any major social index and chances are West Virginia will be last when the goal is to be first, and .....46...1 first when the goal is to be last...
...No one likes eating raw flesh...
...Western Virginians couldn't quite make up their minds during the Civil War, but judging by the preponderance of Rebel shirts, caps, bandanas and tattoos, here, at least, the Confederacy won...
...To save a few bucks on cleanup, the state legislature in 1998 passed a bill permitting drivers to take them home in a doggy-bag...
...I've eaten 'possum—I didn't care for it...
...Perhaps they'll call it Whirled Squirrel...
...With the Little Loggers sloshing away, I headed for cover at the prize tent and caught up with Nancy Smithson, the event's organizer...
...I still have no idea why he said that...
...After a statement like that, I Kill joys...
...We will promote anything, for the most part, if it is a family-oriented event, or an event that promotes art and culture or recreation in the state," she said tersely...
...But you know, all flesh has to be saturated to be made palatable...
...There are trips where the distance traveled is measured in decades rather than hundreds of miles...
...A tufted pie of gravel and fur here...
...We believe that eating meat is an addiction...
...Needless to say, West Virginia gives me the willies...
...Horses and guns were among my best friends growing up in Texas, and tagging armadillos with spray paint from the back of a pickup made for high entertainment...
...just to satisfy what is merely a palate preference...
...If Dean is looking for votes, however, Marlinton's the place for him...
...Still, it's been an acquired taste for the state authorities...
...Take a Saturday joyride through the state and you'll come across tables and tables of everything you never wanted, from appliances to dishes to figurines...
...DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63 SAM DEALEY game...
...Or see that other West Virginia pastime, which seems to entail packing up the house and moving everything to the roadside...
...Great gobs of God's little creatures, some identifiable, others not...
...Now that it's an event with national attention," said Smithson, "they're fine and dandy with it...
...It need not actually come off the road, however, and most of the judges would prefer it didn't...
...The drive from Washington to Marlinton is among them...
...The state trails badly in education, life expectancy and household income, but leads the nation in obesity and all-terrain vehicle fatalities...
...After a pause, he added, "I was out in the West a few weeks ago, and we picked up some grey squirrels...
...In this setting, Marlinton—population 1,000 and falling—seems like a metropolis...
...With a little coaxing, I convinced an unemployed buddy to join me, and on a chill September morning, we set off over hill and dale...
...Culture...
...Donations to the latter group benefited the humane society...
...Objective 19.3 of the West Virginia Healthcare Authority's latest survey is to "contain gonorrhea to an incidence of no more than 75.8 cases per 100,000 people...
...Squashed squirrels in a soup would be great," he murmured...
...When Uncle Jesse gave up on the banjo, it was the turn of the Little Switzerland Cloggers, a tapdance troupe of local schoolgirls in pleated blue dresses that ended in red ruffles just above the knees...
...While most of the attention he gets tends to focus on his recipes for domestic animals ("If you run over a dog, I've got a good recipe for Hushed Puppies"), Peterson claims he can take any piece of DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 AMERICAN SPECTATOR 65 SAM DEALEY mashed meat and mash it into something better...
...In all fairness, the contest's entries aren't roadkill per se...
...But that's the beauty of roadkill cooked well...
...They teamed up with the town's Autumn Harvest festival 13 years ago, and the rest is history...
...When Howard Dean claimed to be a metrosexual, my immediate sense was that he was a pandering poseur...
...Rivas-Rivas has the soft, earnest voice of a born-again, and wields accusatory words like "flesheater" in the same way Carrie Nation swung her hatchet...
...Still, the lady with a gravity-defying swirl of cotton candy hair who led them didn't seem to mind, and neither did the codger in suspenders and plaid shirt who videotaped them...
...I had a feeling I was about to learn...
...And porcupines are really greasy...
...I confessed I did not...
...And if Elroy in his red longjohns and felt hat poaching 'coons in the hollow and swigging 'shine doesn't set your spine tingling, then you've never seen Deliverance...
...As Smithson tells it, the Roadkill Cookoff, much like the catastrophe it honors, just sort of happened one night...
...As a consequence of all those scenic Feeling a little run-down...
...Did I know, he demanded, that 25 billion animals are raised and slaughtered every year in the U.S...
...There was the Ka-ka-pon Diner, for instance, on Route 55 in Wardensville...
...The Pocahontas County Commission won first place with its Buffalo Balls Meatballs, and Madeline Galford and Bill Jordan took third with their "Blood, rocks and guts over snails and maggots," "pea wine," "rotten bread," and "puke butter...
...And there were the serpentine roads that writhed between these towns and others, desolate stretches across which I half expected to see a naked, cackling mountain man scurry...
...Was I aware of the methods employed in these "horror" factories...
...A calendar from 1978 hung on the brown-paneled wall, and for $6, old ladies served slap-up breakfasts of coffee, two eggs, hashbrowns, sausage (patties or links), and biscuits with gravy...
...They thought it promoted a negative image of West Virginia...
...getting her to talk about the cookoff was like pulling teeth—which, given the state's alarming rate of endentulism, I was loath to do...
...Surprisingly, PETA's all for roadkill...
...When I told Smithson I was interested in writing a culture piece on the cookoff, she looked like she'd just been run over...
...By the time Rivas-Rivas got to teeth pulling and beak slicing, things were beginning to get creepy...
...Raccoons are delicious though, if they're done right...
...They're pretty tasty eating...
...Nearby, a rifle raffle was underway...
...p LUG "ROADKILL" INTO AMAZON.COM and you'll find over a thousand books related to the topic...
...Occasionally we'd pass by the odd porch or two, where clumps of old-timers gathered to Can you spare a buck...
...The rules state that "all entries must have as their main ingredient any animal commonly found dead on the side of the road...
...watch the world turn...
...But going to places no one else would want to is the journalist's lot...
Vol. 36 • December 2003 • No. 7
