Gram

Yesterday on CBC, Stephen Quinn was talking about headcheese. Ah headcheese. I never ate you but how you remind me of my childhood.

My Grandmother was good prairie stock. She was 4 foot nothing and she towered over people 2 feet taller.

She and my grandfather were a study in contrasts. She grew vegetables. He grew roses. She surrounded herself with family. I was in my teens before I met any of my grandfather's family. She quoted the bible. He chopped wood.

There was a coal and wood stove in her kitchen. The oven on her electric range was used to store bowls she couldn't fit in her cabinets. The fridge was accessorized with a meat shed, and root cellar. In the event of a nuclear catastrophe her's was the house you wanted to find yourself at. She died ten years ago and I think I just ate her last jar of canned beans.

Years after she sold the farm and moved into the "city" I couldn't bring myself to answer her phone on the first ring. The ring on the farm phone was two short rings and one long. The rhythm of that ring stuck with me well into my 30′s.

Fall was butchering season. The menfolk would go down to the barn. They'd shoot the cow, then give the "all clear" signal. Until the "all clear" was given the kids had to stay in the house.

——————

One shot, but no all clear.

Second shot. Still no all clear.

Third shot. No all clear yet.

The kids looked at each other. We looked in the kitchen. Gram was reaching into the drawer that holds the butchering knives. With one hand she pulled out a knife and a sharpening stone. Her other hand grabbed her white butchering apron off a hook. She threw the apron's top loop over her head, and tucked the knife and sharpening stone under one arm so she could use her hands to tie the apron strings around her.

As she left the house she took the knife in one hand, the sharpening stone in the other and punctuated each step with a blade stroke along the stone. The kids followed her out of the house, careful to stay far enough back that it would be an inconvenience to send us back to the house, but close enough that we could see what was going on.

The menfolk were gathered round a cow. Despite the shots we heard, it was refusing to go down. They looked up. Gram strode past them. One hand reached under and lifted the cow's chin up. The other drew the newly sharpened blade along the cow's neck. It went down.

The uncles, and fathers paused to look at each other and then to Gram, then they got to work. They hoisted the cow, started to bleed it out and laughed at themselves. Gram meanwhile, cleaned the knife on her apron, sharpened it and handed it back to my grandfather so he could use it later to skin the cow.

She got it done.

And, that's the type of woman who would think nothing of wrapping a pig's severed head in a plastic grocery bag, hand it to her 12 year-old granddaughter and send me off to drop it at the shoemaker in town so he could make headcheese.

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