What’s for Dinner

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Growing up, dinner time just happened. Mom would have the table set for dinner when we would come in from the barn after the evening milking. There was never a discussion of what was for dinner. Mom did all that, and you ate what was on the table or went hungry. If you didn’t eat, and Dad was in a good mood, he would offer you some bread and milk before bedtime.

I never remember thanking Mom for dinner. Everyone worked on the farm, and everyone had their job. Mom cooked dinner. That is just the way it was done.

In the Army in Korea, it was much the same. Everyone had their job. Dinner was prepared and cooked by Koreans, hired by the Army with a mess sergeant to supervise the process.

“Let’s clean up your workbench and go to dinner,” I said as I started putting things away on my desk so I could help Truman and Lauser.

It was the middle of summer in South Korea, and the heat was stifling. Everyone hated leaving the air-conditioned operations building and walking half a mile down to the mess hall.

As we stepped out of the operations building, we were greeted by a small snake coming down the sideway toward us. It didn’t look much different than the garter snakes back home.

Truman stopped in his tracks. “Wow, a snake,” he said.

This was the first snake I had seen in the ten months I had been in Korea. Truman was from Arizona, Lauser was from New Mexico, and snakes excited both of them.

“You keep an eye on him,” Lauser said to Truman. “I’ll get something to catch him.”

Lauser ran back into the operations building and was back in a couple of minutes with a coffee can and a piece of typing paper.

The two of them were down on the sidewalk, herding the snake with the piece of paper, trying to convince the little guy to crawl into the coffee can. The snake was striking the paper violently. This was no garter snake.

It didn’t take them long, and they had the snake in the coffee can and the lid attached.

We headed down the hill to the mess hall with Truman carrying the coffee can in the crook of his arm.

There was a crowd in the mess hall this afternoon. A Korean was there peddling painting that had slowed guys’ normal rapid exit after eating.

We found an empty table, and Truman set the coffee can on the corner. After going through the serving line, one of the Korean waitresses came over and took our drink order.

It wasn’t long before another of the girls came over and wanted to know what we had in the coffee can.

“A snake,” Truman said.

I don’t think she understood the English word.

“Can I see?” she asked.

Truman carefully peeled the plastic lid off the coffee can. The snake was coiled against the side of the can.

The girl shrieked and jumped back. She returned to the group of girls watching. They were all excited and talking amongst themselves.

Pretty soon, another girl approached the table but kept her distance from the coffee can.

“That snake you have in the can,” she said. “It is a very bad snake.”

Both Truman and Lauser hooped and hollered at that information.

“Maybe you guys should have somebody check that snake,” I said. “Let’s take it to the first sergeant and have him send it to the medics.”

After dinner, Truman and Lauser took the coffee can over to the first sergeant’s office. The CQ on duty said they would send it to the medics in the morning.

During lunch a couple of days later, the First Sergeant came over to our table.

“That snake, you guys, caught the other day just happens to be one of the most dangerous snakes in Asia, it’s called a short-tailed viper or something like that,” the First Sergeant said. “Next time you see a snake in this country, you either kill it or leave it the hell alone. The medical officer was pretty upset. He said if that snake had bitten anyone, they would be dead.”

In Schöningen, West Germany, we were on our own for dinner. Our small border outpost had about seventy guys, and no spouses were allowed. We were paid extra to live on the economy, TDY pay.

“Hey, what are you guys doing for dinner tonight?” I asked as we were doing the final clean-up of the shop on Friday evening.

“Why don’t we all have dinner at the Rathskeller,” Jim said. “I’ll split a Chateaubriand dinner with you.”

The Rathskeller was the best restaurant in Schöningen. Their “Chateaubriand for two” was the most expensive meal on their menu. It cost twenty marks. At an exchange rate in 1968 of four marks to the dollar, that was five dollars. Split between the two of us was the best meal in town for two dollars and fifty cents.

When the waitress placed the large wooden platter between Jim and me, we were both hungry. Centered on the platter was the chateaubriand, a large hunk of tenderloin roast. Then they were potatoes, white asparagus, variable raw veggies, and fruit. And a dollop of caviar topped the platter.

“I’ll trade you my share of the asparagus for your share of the caviar,” Jim said. “I just have never been able to eat the stuff.”

“I never ate asparagus at home,” I said. “But I sort of like this white stuff. And caviar is nothing but fish eggs. I sure don’t understand the attraction people have with it.”

The tenderloin was perfectly cooked, and we washed everything down with a liter of beer.

“Tell me again that we don’t live like kings,” Jim said.

After dinner, we made our way to the Bahnhof Hotel. We finished the evening with beer, wine, or whatever until the wee hours of the morning at the Swing Club run by the Army.

The life of Riley came to an abrupt end when I got an early out from the Army to return to school. I made a mad dash from my point of discharge at Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Corvallis, Oregon, to enroll at Oregon State University.

That summer, I lived with my brother and his family. Dinner was always on the table when Gary and I returned from school. I don’t think I ever said thank you to Kathy. That was just a job for a mom.

“What’s for dinner tonight?” Gary asked Kathy as soon as we walked into the apartment. “I’m hungry tonight. Maybe we should have steak.”

“No such luck,” Kathy said. “You know the kids don’t eat steak. We have spaghetti tonight.”

“This might be a good night for me to take everyone out of pizza,” I said.

“You mean I get a night off,” Kathy said. “That would be great, but with the kids, it has to be pepperoni.”

I don’t remember Kathy getting many days off that summer in 1969.

Besides school, I laid on the floor with the kids and watched the moon landing by the astronauts.

And as before, all good things come to an end. Gary and his family moved back to Myrtle Point and his teaching job. And I moved into a small older trailer house that I purchased. Now what’s for dinner was my job. I couldn’t afford to go out like I did in Germany. Figuring out what I was going to eat every night became a chore.

The problem was solved when I called Mom.

“I think I need your meatloaf recipe and potato salad recipe,” I told Mom on the phone.

“Well, David, I will put them in the mail for you, but they are large recipes and probably more than you could eat,” Mom said.

“I am figuring that I will make a recipe of each on Sunday, and then that is what I will eat all week,” I said.

“Don’t you think you will get tired of eating the same thing all the time?” Mom asked.

“Mom, I get tired of fixing dinner every night,” I said. “This won’t be bad; Stoney and I, and sometimes some others, eat at King’s Table every Thursday, so that breaks up the week.”

That is how it went for a couple of years until I married. Then I was back to not worrying about what’s for dinner until I retired. Sandy considered herself retired also, and I was back to doing my share of the cooking.

Photo by Hyun-tae Kim – https///www.inaturalist.org/photos/2809108

The Speed Limit

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

Our son was getting married in 2001. Nothing special; it was just one of those rites of passage. The unusual thing, the wedding was in Nebraska.

“This is going to work great for us,” Sandy said as she read the card she had just received. “We can go to Nebraska a week early, rent a car, and drive to Wisconsin for Ruth and Maurice’s seventieth wedding anniversary.”

“How much of a drive is it from Lincoln to Marshfield?” I asked. “Maybe we should just fly to Marshfield.”

“I would guess it is about eight hours,” Sandy said. “But you have to fly to Madison and then drive from there. By the time you spend all the time in the airports, you probably don’t save much time by flying.”

“I’m okay with it,” I said. “We can probably look around the area while we are there. You will probably get a lot of the visiting other than the anniversary.”

“I think Dick and Charlie are going,” Sandy said. “I guess I better get on the phone and see about reservations.”

“Maybe you should check with one of the Behrens before you make reservations,” I said. “They maybe have a block of rooms reserved.”

And so Sandy made plans. We would get a round-trip ticket to Lincoln, Nebraska. Once there, we would rent a car and drive to Marshfield. We booked an early morning flight out of Portland and had a plane change in Denver. We were lucky that there was no layover in Denver, and we would be in Lincoln before noon local time.

Danny Behrens had reserved a block of rooms at a large motel. The motel would provide the family a hospitality room so everyone could relax and visit.

“This looks like a doable trip,” I said. “The only thing that worries me is getting off the plane and then driving eight hours.”

“We have made long trips,” Sandy said. “And we will be able to rest up after the drive. We will have a full week before we have to get back to the wedding. And Ruth and John are the only of Dad’s siblings still around, and they are old enough, and this will be my last chance to see them.”

“The drive shouldn’t be bad,” I said. “It looks like we will be a freeway all the way except the last few miles.”

“And in early September, we should have good weather,” Sandy said.

“I hate to bring that up, but I guess you remember the snowstorm we had in September when we moved to Colorado,” I said.

“We won’t talk about that, and I need to go shopping,” Sandy said. “I need a new dress for the wedding and a few things for Wisconsin.”

***

The airport Ramada Inn made us a deal we couldn’t refuse. We stayed overnight, and they parked our car for the long week we were gone. Since our flight was so early, they had breakfast in a sack for us to eat on the shuttle bus to the airport.

Checking our bags and checking in for the flight was no problem. We were seated on the plane and heading down the runway in no time. When I flew in the Army, I usually had a drink or two to relax for the takeoff. I hated the takeoffs and landings. The only thing that had changed from those years, there were no drinks now.

I could nap a bit on the flight, and the plane change in Denver was simple. Before we knew it, we got off the plane in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Lincoln’s airport was small. We stopped for a quick lunch, a hamburger, and fries. Then finding the rental cars was no problem. We had reserved a midsized car.

“I can upgrade your car to a full-sized sedan if you would like,” the gal at the desk said. “If you are driving to Wisconsin, it might be a little more comfortable for you.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said.

We threw our bags into the large trunk and started down the road. It was just after noon.

“We should have daylight all the way,” I said. “That will be a good thing. I hate trying to find my way around a new city in the dark.”

We took I-70 toward Des Moines, Iowa, then turned north on I-35. There was not a lot of scenery to look at, but I was not prepared for the corn. 

There was corn for as far as one could see in every direction, and this went on for miles and miles. During the entire trip through Iowa, we drove through massive cornfields.

“If they harvest this corn for grain, what do they do with all the stalks?” I asked, more to myself than to Sandy.

“I have no idea,” Sandy said.

“I mean, at home, we would fill a silo with ten acres of corn,” I said. “Here they whole sections of corn, one section after another. That is a tremendous amount of plant material to dispose of. How do they do that?”

The speed limit on the freeway was sixty-five miles per hour. Since I was driving a rented car, I drove the speed limit.

All the way through Iowa, I was the slowest car on the road. Cars and trucks zoomed past me like I was standing still.

We were close to the Minnesota state line when we stopped for a bite to eat at a small community. I don’t remember the name, but tractors parked in front of the little restaurant we chose.

When the waitress brought our food, I figured she would know what they did with all the corn stalks.

“Can you tell me what happens to all the corn stalks when they harvest the corn?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” the gal answered. “I’m not a farm girl, and I have only been here for a few months.”

She probably figured it was a dumb question.

When we crossed into Minnesota, not much changed. The highway surface was not well maintained on the interstate, but the traffic did not slow because of it. I continued to be the slowest car on the road.

We were on I-90, and when we crossed the Mississippi River into Wisconsin, some traffic left the freeway, and some entered, but the main flow of traffic was unchanged.

I did not change my speed. I still drove sixty-five to sixty-seven miles per hour. The thing that did change was now, in Wisconsin, I was passing everyone. The entire line of cars was in the right-hand lane, and I was slowly passing them.

“Maybe they know something I don’t,” I said to Sandy.

“I think you should pull into the right lane and go with the traffic flow,” Sandy said.

That is what I did. I pulled into the line of cars in the right lane, and the traffic was going sixty-four to sixty-five miles per hour.

Not long later, a young man in a car came by in the left lane. He was not going much faster than I had been driving, but he slowly passed the string of cars.

It was about ten minutes later when we passed the young man. He was pulled over by a state trooper and got a ticket and a lecture.

“I think they are serious about the speed limit in this state,” I said.

We arrived in Marshfield in the evening and found the motel with no problem. The bed felt good, and we slept until almost nine.

We had a good visit in Marshfield. We visited with Ruth and Maurice in their assisted living apartment. Sandy and her brothers could see the farm they had lived at in their early years. Sandy was five when they moved to Oregon.

Sandy’s Uncle John took the group to dinner at a nearby lake. During the evening, John and his son, Mark, were discussing some guy in the neighborhood. 

“He isn’t a man you can trust,” John said to Mark. “He doesn’t even drive the speed limit.”

I don’t think I had ever heard that about any person before.

The anniversary reception was excellent, and everyone was happy we had come. I was definitely the outsider, trying to learn everyone’s name and where they fit in the family, but I had a good time. 

Ruth lived another dozen years following the anniversary, making it to the age of one hundred. Maurice passed away a few years following the anniversary.

Maurice came over to me in the middle of the celebration. He sat down beside me.

“I think they just plow those stalks back into the ground,” he said. 

I don’t know if Sandy had told him I was curious or if he had overheard me talking about it to someone else.

Our drive back to Lincoln was leisurely, and our time there was enjoyable. All the kids arrived, along with my brother, Gary, and his wife, Kathy.

The wedding was held at Boss Hog’s place of The Dukes of Hazzard fame.

Going home, we all were on the same plane from Lincoln to Denver. The plane was overbooked, and Gary and Kathy took a bump. Our daughter, Dee, and her husband parted ways with us in Denver. 

We arrived in Portland and retrieved our car. The date was September ninth, 2001. My brother and his wife thought about taking another bump on the tenth but went ahead and came home.

And then 9/11 happened.

Photo by Dave Larsen.

Meat is Life, From the Archives

D.E. Larsen, DVM

“What would you say if I told you I thought you ate too much red meat,” Dr. Goddard asked?

This was my first appointment with Dr. Goddard. He was trying to get a new style of practice off the ground, and I needed a new primary care doctor.

“I don’t think your profession knows squat about nutrition.” 

“That is sort of blunt,” Dr. Goddard says with a surprised look on his face.

“First eggs are bad. My mother-in-law lived for her eggs in the morning. Her doctors put her through hell for the last few years of her life. Now eggs are fine.”

“Okay, I will give you that one,” Dr. Goddard said. “But let’s get back to the red meat.”

“I am not sure you have looked at my file. I am a veterinarian. At heart, I am a cow doctor. Except for my 4 years in the army, my entire life has been involved with cows. I eat red meat, and that is not a discussion topic for this visit.”

“I don’t understand how you guys can feel good about caring for animals and then sending them to slaughter,” Dr. Goddard said. “The saying, meat is murder, comes to mind.”

“I think you are trying to bring this appointment to a close,” I said.

“No, I am sorry, I just don’t understand,” Dr. Goddard said with an apologetic tone.

“Do you want the long story or the short story?”

“I guess I better hear the long story,” Dr. Goddard said.

“How far are you removed from the farm? I mean, did your grandfather live on a farm?”

“No, my roots are in the city for a whole lot of generations,” Dr. Goddard said.

“So when you drive down the freeway and see hundreds of sheep grazing on the grass seed fields, how many of those sheep to you suppose would be there if they didn’t sell lamb chops in the store?”

“I hadn’t given it any thought,” Dr. Goddard said.

“Not even considering the expense of maintaining a flock of sheep for a year, the labor is considerable. People wouldn’t do it for fun.”

“I see your point,” Dr. Goddard said.

“But you wanted the long story. Those lambs that go to market probably live less than a year. But my profession ensures that their year on earth is good. And we ensure that the meat that reaches the market is the best available in the world,” I said.

“A short life is far better than no life. And the market lambs sacrifice themselves to give their mothers and some of their sisters a long life. So I would change your little quip to be more like meat is life,” I said.

“And the story goes on. I place at least some of the blame on your profession for the family farm’s demise in this country. You guys have been in cahoots with the food industry in your drive to reduce consumption of meat and dairy. Not only the egg issue, but butter is another one. You pushed margarine to replace butter. So you had your patients consuming trans fat instead of butter. Your understanding of Cholesterol metabolism at the general practitioner level was way under my training.”

“I am not sure I will take the blame for the demise of the family farm,” Dr. Goddard said.

“It was a complex issue, but you guys were cheering from the sidelines, at least. And what was the result of that loss? You guys make your recommendations and do your heart surgeries and your drugs, adding a few years onto the life of an old man. With the loss of the family farm, you also lost a whole cluster of farm kids. Farm kids served as stabilizing influencers to their peer groups. Without the farm kids, we have seen drug use spiral out of sight. We lose far more years of life to overdosing than you save in the old men. We lose probably more years yet to the pits of addiction. That all happened at the same time, I don’t think you can convince me there is not a correlation.”

“You give me something to think about,” Dr. Goddard said. “And I guess you are not much interested in my spiel on red meat.”

“No, but I want you to know, every time I throw a steak on the grill, I give silent thanks to the animal who provided it. And in a couple of seconds, many animals flash through my mind. The cows I pulled from a creek or saved from death, the calves who I worked so they could be conceived, the steers in the feedlots, and the ones going through the slaughter process.”

“So, after all of that, do you still what me as your doctor,” Dr. Goddard asked?

“When I was playing ball in high school, I was told that it was a good thing when a coach chewed you out. If he didn’t think you were worth his time, he would say anything. You just need to mark that file to not discuss red meat.”

Photo by Julia Volk from Pexels