First Things First

The Harsh Realities Of Bacon

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Throughout my teen-age years breakfast was truly the meal I enjoyed the most.

Each morning I would wake-up to the smell of bacon. When I finally made my way to the kitchen table there would be some eggs and perh a p s s o m e g r i t s waiting for me, but the star of t h e s h o w was a B I G bowl of bacon waiting at my plate.

I always point out that I ate a “cereal bowl” full of bacon by myself each morning. Now I’m not talking about some little bitty bowl — It was the bowl that you would serve mashed potatoes to the whole family in at a meal. And it wasn’t just any kind of bacon, it was bacon ends and pieces from Wood’s Grocery, which was located just across from the Spartas clock factory in my hometown of Louisville, Mississippi.

In that pile of hog meat heaven there were big chunks of meat cooked good and firm. What little bit of fat you could find was cooked to the point where it tasted like meat itself.

To me, that was bacon. When you asked for bacon you got four things — it was thick; it was salty; it was well done; and there was a LOT of it!!!

That’s the way my breakfast life rolled — until I got to college and began to learn some of the “truths” about life.

I distinctly remember going to the IHOP in Hattiesburg just across the street from the University of Southern Mississippi where I basically went through the motions of going to college for a year of my life.

I was staying up late to study for an exam, so some friends and I crossed Hardy Street into what t totally misconstrued as an establishment that understood the nuances of serving breakfast. We ordered a pot of coffee (of course) and most of my friends went for the pancakes. I looked at the menu and ordered a “rasher of bacon.”

There are two things I discovered when my plate arrived — I obviously had no idea that just how small a “rasher” was and after looking at those two strips of wimpy, flimsy, barely warm pieces of pig I knew for sure that I was neither In Kansas anymore or at my Momma’s breakfast table.

I was stunned.

Later in life I began to understand that this new “pretend way” to serve bacon was what the uninformed consider normal.

My opinion, however, has not changed. If you are got to kill a pig the least you can do is serve it in big chunks, salted down well, and for goodness sakes cook it well enough that it won’t hang like a drooping flag when you hold it up.

Trust me — If you can see through your bacon, it ain’t bacon!

Austin Bishop is editor and publisher of the Kemper County Messenger. He and his wife Barbara took over ownership of the newspaper on Oct. 1, 2021. Bishop, who has worked in the journalism field for 45 years, is also pastor of Great Commission Assembly of God in Philadelphia. He can be reached by email at starsportsboss@yahoo.com.






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