SMART ENOUGH

Dad and I used to cook a dab (in between beer drankin') when I would visit Wright City.

When yellow squash was in season, we'd cut them puppies into silver dollar size and roll them in a bit of corn meal, flour, and seasoning. We'd heat grease in a pan with a wire basket in it and drop a double handful of the garden morsels in to get golden brown. Our "trick" was that we would eat the first batches til we were full, then start putting squash on the platter to take in the house to company.

On a day that we had figgered for bar b que, we managed to accidental on purpose kill a raccoon.

Now you would need to know that if you can swaller enough Budweiser in one day, it will make you brilliant (or at least smart enough to think you can cook and eat a raccoon?)

Anywho, Dad and I skinned that 'coon, put him on the smoker pit bout 10AM, and drank another beer. As the day progressed, we periodically basted the prize meat with sauce, and drank another beer. We would think about slicing off a tender morsel of that nocturnal nicety, and drink another beer.

I reckon that after bout 8 hours on the smoker (and 80 beers) we finally got the (courage?) to sample our delicacy. But just to be sure, we drank another beer.

Dad took a hunk and I took a hunk. We eyeballed each other a while with nervous grins and then sank our teeth gum deep into that varmit.

Well sir, we chewed, and chewed, and chewed some more, but that shoe leather just kept getting bigger in our mouths (and greasier?)

Wasn't long before we just up and spit it on the ground (and drank another beer).

Seems that beer had made us smart enough, but it just hadn't made us drunk enough to gnaw the hindquarter of a masked barnyard bandit?