Farmer H used to get onto his older boys quite regularly about their manners at the dinner table. Little Future Veteran was a bit unnerved by it. Remember in True Grit, when Rooster Cogburn told Mattie Ross of Near Dardanelle in Yell County about his stepson, Horace? "That boy musta broke forty cup!" Well. Little Future Veteran must have SPILLED forty cups of liquid. Milk, juice, soda, water... home, restaurant, friends' houses... didn't matter. Maybe he tried too hard NOT to spill, and it was on his mind.
HOS (Farmer H's Oldest Son) was not a spiller. He was a shoveler. Farmer H was continually reminding him not to hunch over his plate, holding his fork in his fist.
"You act like you're in prison. Like a convict, shoveling your food. That's not how you hold a fork. It's like this. Like holding a pencil."
"At least I'm using a fork."
HOS was always a different-drummer marcher. He held his meat down with his left palm, while sawing at it with the knife in his right.
"Look what you're doing, son! That's not how you cut meat! Here. Use the fork in your left hand to hold it in place, then slice it with the knife. Then you switch hands with the fork when you eat it."
"Or I can eat it with the fork in my left hand," said HOS, gripping it with his fist, shoveling in a piece of meat.
"You have to be civilized, son! And now is the time to learn it."
By the time he was 13, HOS had a girlfriend. She was the daughter of one of Farmer H's bowling buddies. She invited HOS over for supper one evening. Farmer H made sure HOS's hair was combed, back in the chili bowl days, parted down the middle. Made sure he put on a clean shirt. Then dropped him off at the girlfriend's house. When he got home, we sat around talking about his dinner date.
"Did you hold your fork right?"
"Dad. We had pork chops. My girlfriend picked hers up with her hands and started gnawing on it. Ronnie gave his plate to his wife, for her to cut it up for him, after she was done fixing the baby's plate. So I'm pretty sure my manners were good enough."
Switch hands with the fork when you eat it? Really? I like HOS's way better, it's what we all learned as kids, we hold the fork in our left hand cut with the knife in the right hand and then eat from the fork still in our left hand. Is the cut-switch-eat method more posh? Is it exclusively American? I've never seen anyone else do that.
ReplyDeleteAs for pick it up and gnaw on it, that's the best method at a barbecue, also for chicken wings and drumsticks, but it does get the hands messy.
River,
ReplyDeleteNot posh. Just American. I remember seeing on one of those semi cooking shows how the British keep the fork in the left hand. I guess we're the odd ones, and everyone else does the more sensible left-hand fork thing.
I always pick up my chicken if it's on the bone. Sometimes Farmer H will fiddle around with a knife and fork. Even plastic ones, in the fast-food chicken place we eat on the way to CasinoPalooza. I don't know who he thinks he's fooling. They even include little hand-wipe packets, so they EXPECT people to use their hands. It's a Lee's Chicken chain in Rolla, Missouri.