Head Cheese

HEAD CHEESE and PIG'S FEET

AN APOLOGY

By: Paul Revis 05/14/2012


         I write this on what remains of the internet, my son's "Official Blog To The Universe" to explain, as best I can, how this all came about. At least as I understand it. My hope is that I will be able to finish before I am caught and done away with in some bizarre manner as is my son's usual way of dealing with things that upset him. Where to start?
         I began dating 3Black Alex, as he called himself, twenty two years ago. He and I met at a hacker's conference in, of all places, southern Ohio. Only the very best were even aware that such a thing was even taking place. He was a dark and foreboding person, with black eyes that bore through to your very soul. When he entered the darkened warehouse in which the conference was taking place every eye turned to him, and being the rebellious daughter of a famous software industry giant, I naturally fell instantly in what I thought was love. We never actually married in the traditional sense. One Saturday evening a dozen or so "World of Warcraft" freaks showed up in full costume. After setting up a long table full of geek food, one of them mumbled a few dozen unintelligible words, tapped us both on the head with a weird looking aluminum sword, threw down some flash powder, and everyone got roaring drunk. Alex said we were now married, and that was good enough for him. It was a bit less satisfying for me but it was what it was and I went along with it.

         After our "wedding", Alex demanded that I stop using the birth control pill I so rigorously took each day. "I want a son," he demanded. "It must be a son. Nothing else is acceptable, and will therefore be terminated."
Within a week I knew I was pregnant. Alex, in his only concession to the "establishment", faithfully took me to a good doctor, and when the time was right, had an ultra-sound done. The baby was a girl, and I was forced into an abortion. It messed up my head, I think, and I have not been quite right ever since. At least that's what his minions say when they think I can't hear them. They may be right, who am I to say they aren't? I became demanding of Alex's attention constantly until I was sure, once again, that I was pregnant. This time the ultra-sound showed a man-child, and Alex was happy, finally. At least as happy as the Great 3Black Alex could ever be.

         Some women, while pregnant, crave odd things. Pickles and ice-cream, for instance, seems to be a classic. With me it was something truly bizarre. I craved head cheese. Freshly made, and still slightly warm from the making.

         I am not what you'd call a vegetarian like most of the other geeks we hung around with, I do eat meat, but I'm selective about it. A hamburger or a steak, chicken or fish sparingly. I'm okay with that. When it comes to the more exotic, like a pate' for instance or even a bologna, I just can't seem to stomach it, so for me to crave such an atrocity as a head cheese, well, it was disturbing.

         At an estate sale I found an old cook book, "The Every Day Cook Book and Encyclopedia of Practical Recipes, Illustrated" by Miss E. Neil which promised to be "economical, reliable, and excellent" printed in 1892 in Chicago by the Regan Printing House. There on page 98 of the tattered old book in faded black and yellowed white, was the very recipe I needed to calm the awful cravings in my brain. Shall I give it to you? It's rather long and a bit disturbing for the modern wife and mother-to-be, but I think in the interest of history, necessary. So, here goes:

HEAD CHEESE

         Having thoroughly cleaned a hog's head or pig's head split it in two with a sharp knife, take out the eyes, take out the brains, cut off the ears and pour scalding water over them and the head, and scrape them clean. Cut off any part of the nose which may be discolored so as not to be scraped clean; then rinse all in cold water, and put it into a large kettle with hot (not boiling) water to cover it, and set the kettle (having covered it) over the fire; let it boil gently, taking off the scum as it rises when boiled so that the bones leave the meat readily, take it from the water with a skimmer into a large wooden bowl or tray; take from it every particle of bone; chop the meat small and season to taste with salt and pepper, and if liked a little sage or thyme; spread a cloth in a colander or sieve; set it in a deep dish, and put the meat in, then fold the cloth closely over it, lay a weight on which may press equally the whole surface (a sufficiently large plate will serve) Let the weight be more or less heavy, according as you may wish the cheese to be fat or lean; a heavy weight by pressing out the fat will of course leave the cheese lean. When cold take the weight off; take it from the colander or sieve, scrape off whatever fat may be found on the outside of the cloth, and keep the cheese in the cloth in a cool place, to be eaten sliced thin, with or without mustard, and vinegar, or catsup. After the water is cold in which the head was boiled, take off the fat from it, and whatever may have drained from the sieve, or colander, and cloth; put it together in some clean water, give it one boil; then strain it through a cloth, and set it to become cold; then take off the cake of fat. It is fit for any use.

         Like a thoroughly maddened woman, I demanded of Alex a hog to be slaughtered. Not by a butcher, or the crazed kid who came to see us from time to time carrying his collection of evil looking knives and spears. No, I wanted to do it myself to insure it was done properly, by the book.

         I was never sure how much Alex loved me, since he rarely showed emotion of any kind. Most rabid geeks are like that I find, but without a word of protest, he called one of his darker minions, which is what he called his closest friends, and had them find a hog for me to slaughter. Again, no protests, no questions, and three hours later a squealing hog was delivered in the back of a tattered pickup truck to our door, stolen, I'm sure but at the time I couldn't have cared less, so great was the craving in my over-heated brain. The wretched beast was led with some difficulty to our back yard. It seemed to know what lay before it.

         Exactly what it was that came over me that day I'll never quite understand. I gleefully picked up the knife I had chosen for the task and slit the throat of the hog, watching with some fascination as the blood spewed from the animal. I caught some of it, smearing it on my shirt over the bulge of my belly as if telling the child inside me that this was for him. I felt the child kick inside of me. Running into the house, I prepared the boiling pot and followed Miss Neil's recipe to the letter. What happened to the rest of the hog, I had no idea, nor did I care. I had what I needed. I think Alex gave it to one of his minions for a pig roast.
This scene happened at least once more before it dawned on me that I was wasting a perfectly good hog just for its brain like some deranged zombie. The answer, of course, was right there in front of me on page 99, a recipe for soused pig's feet:

PIG'S FEET SOUSED

Scald and scrape clean the feet: if the covering of the toes will not come off without, singe them in hot embers, until they are loose, then, take them off. Many persons lay them in weak lime water to whiten them. Having scraped them clean and white, wash them and put them in a pot of hot (not boiling) water, with a little salt, and let them boil gently, until by turning a fork in the flesh it will easily break and the bones are loosened. Take off the scum as it rises. When done, take them from the hot water into cold vinegar, enough to cover them, add to it one-third as much of the water in which they were boiled; add whole pepper and all-spice, with cloves and mace if liked, put a cloth and a tight fitting cover over the pot or jar. Soused feet may be eaten cold from the vinegar, split in two from top to toe, or having split them, dip them in wheat flour and fry in hot lard, or broil and butter them. In either case, let them be nicely browned.


         Alex brought the fourth hog to me thinking that the result would be the usual head cheese.
"I need it lying on its side," I said as a sinister cloud of red seemed to cover my eyes. It should have been a warning to me, but once again the cravings were taking hold of my brain.
"It's not going to stay that way voluntarily," said Alex with a quizzical look on his face. I think he was beginning to fear me ever so little.
"Then tie it down!" I shouted. "Haven't you ever heard of hog-tied? Just DO IT!" I walked away to select the proper tool for the job at hand, and to begin the pot of water.

3Black Alex was just about to stun the hog with a hammer when I came from behind the door. "NO!" I screamed. No damage to the head, the brain has to be undamaged! And be careful with the feet as well. I need them."
From behind my long skirt I began to swing the heavy axe I had dragged from the shed. The angle was wrong for decapitating the beast, and Alex saw it, saw the trajectory, knew what I was about to do.

"Cora, NO!" he shouted, "You can't do that, please don't!"
"I need the feet. The recipe doesn't say the hog needs to be dead, it just says to take the feet and that's what I'm going to do, take the feet."
The sounds that came from the beast when the axe fell were almost enough to make me stop, but not quite. Four times the axe fell. Four times I stopped long enough to pick up the precious foot and place it on a plate, feeling the warm blood ooze from the end.
"Quiet. It will all be over soon," I whispered to the suffering animal. The final powerful stroke took the head off of the body. "You see? All better. Bring it to the house, Alex," I commanded. There was a tear in his eye, I noticed, but obviously he didn't understand. It wasn't him with the demanding child growing inside making him do these terrible things. I wondered if the water was boiling yet. Would I need the lime water? These are the serious questions, not whether the hog squealed, or even the blood stains on my best dress.

Four months later, 5Black Alex was born. I had no say whatsoever as to the child's name. My husband took care of that minor detail without consulting me in any way, and by that time I didn't care. He could have named him Oaktreeburlap for all I cared. I was exhausted from the birth, and far too shocked from the sight of my progeny to care what anyone called it.

We didn't present the child to very many people. The sight of him was quite disturbing, with his alarmingly flat nose, distorted ears, and slightly shortened fingers; he bore the obvious features of .....well, you know already, don't you?
His entire life in school was more torture than any child should have to endure. I never wanted him to begin; I knew what lie in store for him. He begged me to take him to school. I knew he was a genius, that much was obvious when he began writing his own computer code at the age of three. By age four he began to quietly disassemble the internet just to see if it could be done. The code he had written allowed him to do it, and in one day he caused four thousand random web sites to disappear, and all links to them, as if they had never existed. It made the ten o'clock news, and it made 5Black Alex smile. It would be the last time I would ever see him smile.
Government people showed up, more than once actually, but none of them could get it through their far too thick skulls that a five year old could be the one hacking into and deleting their precious information. No matter what they did the sites would not stay on the net. No one could figure out how he did it, not even his genius father who had taught him how to code in the first place.
For eight years, 5, as I had called him, (actually, he demanded it) attended school with the other children, all of whom were ten years older than him. His graduation from the premiere computer college in the world at the age of twelve went, because he demanded it, un-noticed by the media. In cyber-space, however, things were not so quiet. The numeral 5 began to show up where once there were web-sites, and at one point he was able to insert a number 5 between each letter in the "Google" home page. They were not amused, and said so. The following day, 5 shut them down for an hour, or more precisely, 55 minutes, 55 seconds, a fact that did not go without comment.
We tried taking his computers away, we're not totally stupid you know, but 5 had seen that little trick coming from the beginning. Unless he entered a password into his computer system every few minutes something really bad would happen somewhere. He shut down the entire power grid in France first, then the hydroelectric system in China, which nearly caused the world's biggest dam to burst. Bombing raids from England to Sweden were next. Somehow it just seemed to be easier to let him have the bloody computers. That was a big mistake.
The rest you all know. 5's "Official Blog To The Universe" is one of only fifty five web-sites left on the internet. It is the only news remaining in cyber-space, and it isn't good news, in fact it isn't even good writing. 5 can code, he just can't write. Nobody knows why he did what he did. I don't, and I'm his mother, a fact I don't usually admit to.

He is up in his bunker deciding what he considers is news for today. I'm not sure what the consequences will be, but I have a large kettle full of water out in the back yard filled about half way with water, and a large fire under it. My old axe is still sharp, and 5 has done as much damage to the world as I'm going to let him. Now, where did I put Miss Neil's book?

end