SIZES Have you ever noticed that nearly everything we encounter in society is regulated by “size?” And there are a ton of them: small, medium, large, extra-large, extra-extra-large and clear up through Tennessee Tent and Awning! There is mini and mega; micro and miniscule, tiny, humongous, huge, minimal, gigantic and so many more. There is minute, minuscule, microscopic, nanoscale, infinitesimal, very small, little, mini, diminutive, miniature, scaled down, baby, toy, dwarf, pygmy, peewee, Lilliputian and gargantuan! And let’s not forget the kitchen… there is a pinch, a taste, a smidgen, a dump, a handful, a li’tle a this and li’tle of that, a serving, a heaping serving, not much, a lot and a BUFFET! Today while driving in from Bristol, Virginia where I stopped for the night after leaving Queens yesterday morning and fighting traffic up the east side of Manhattan, through the Bronx, across the Hudson (in DRIVING RAIN) and finally through Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and nearly the entire state of Virginia, I stopped for gas just west of Kingsport, Tennessee. Next door was a KFC. Now we all know that fried chicken is as southern as armadillo road-kill and though there’s enough cholesterol to choke the Men’s Sunday school class at the First Baptist Church, we still need it from time to time. And of course no one makes ‘em better’n our mamas cause that’s the way we were raised! Whether she still has her hands in the Crisco or has “risen” above it and is now plucking a golden harp. one thing she could do was make fried chicken! (Of course, my mama never was very musical, so they’ve got her making biscuits and home-made yeast rolls.) But I digress. I swerved into the KFC and rolled down the window… “Would you like to try our chicken bowl combo today?” “No thank you. Do you have livers?” (Yes, some of us actually DO like chicken livers. There’s no better way to get your iron unless you want to gnaw on a trailer hitch. When I was growing up, fried chicken was Sunday fare, every Sunday, not roast beef as was the case with a lot of southerners, but fried chicken. We never tired of it and actually craved it throughout the week. We WOULD have ham and baked beans and potato salad on Easter Sunday and chicken and dressin’ on Thanksgiving and Christmas but Sunday’s was fried chicken. And after mama fried the legs and thighs and breast and wings and back, she fried the livers. There weren’t many and that was okay since liver is not a food item appreciated by kids. I know children who’d prefer a bad case of poison ivy to putting a piece of liver in their mouth. It’s an acquired taste… sort of like 100-year-old Scotch or potted meat! But somewhere along about your mid-thirties, your taste buds recover or make a miraculous transformation and what you hated as a child now becomes a treasured delicacy that you’ll pawn the silver for … not that liver is expensive but you get my drift.) “Yes, we have livers.” “GREAT!” (Some KFC’s have stopped carrying them.) “Huh?” (Never try to make small talk with a high-school drop-out who’s manning a drive-up window.) “What size do you have?” “What do you mean?” “What size livers do you have, small, medium…” “Oh, we have the “snack” or the meal.” Now this should have been my first clue—a new category of “size!” We all know we can purchase a “snack” size at a lot of fast-food restaurants and you get about 4 pieces of something which is, yes, a snack. But what is a “meal” size? “What is the difference in the snack and the meal?” “The snack is just liver and a biscuit. The meal comes with a biscuit and two sides.” “Well, I just want the livers. You can keep the biscuit.” “I cain’t do that.” “Why?” (Wrong question and I should have known better.) “It’s the way it ‘come.’ We give a biscuit with ever’thang and cause that’s the way it ‘come.’ “ “Then let it ‘come’ that way.” “Huh?” “I’ll take two snacks.” “You want TWO of ‘em?” (That should have been my second clue.) “Yes, I don’t want the sides, just the livers. I don’t want the biscuit but since that’s the way it ‘come’ I’ll take it.” (You see, I actually wanted lunch but I didn’t want all the other stuff; just the livers so I figured the snack size would be just enough. BOY was I mistaken.) “Ok, that’ll be $11.27. Pull around please.” So I pulled around and what ‘come’ at me through the window was two gigantic boxes of chicken livers. As it turns out the “snack” size of chicken livers is enough to fill a water-tight compartment on the Titanic! I opened the first box and there steaming up at me were enough chicken livers to choke a horse. I gazed back at the girl in the window; she was smiling and hollered, “You wanted two of ‘em.” I smiled back, ate about a handful and later deposited the rest AND the second box into a trash receptacle at a rest stop just outside Knoxville. And I’m here to tell you, if word gets out, half the homeless in East Tennessee will eat well tonight!
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 01:32:30 +0000
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