Starting off #ExcerptWeek for us this time around is novelist and essayist, Bill Engleson, with a very funny essay on–of all things–turnips! Welcome, Bill, and thanks for sharing with us today.

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 Turnip Love

“A degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.” 17^th century saying.

      There are so many issues aflutter in the world today that even I, a practitioner of tangential thought, am shocked and embarrassed that I am taking the time to ruminate on the lowly turnip. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and war occupy the airwaves. I follow all of their ramifications religiously, never wavering from the belief that one has a responsibility to remain current. These events are often overwhelming; they are frequently of catastrophic size. Certainly this past year has witnessed the giant tsunami that steamrolled the Far East and Hurricane Katrina that sank New Orleans, not to mention the massive earthquake along the Pakistan border whose toll, at this writing, can only increase.
      But to cope with the monumental hugeness of nature and man run ferociously amuck, I have to seek out smaller issues, tinier morsels of potentially digestible material.
      Hence, the story of my life and how it collided with The TURNIP.

“The candle in that great turnip has gone out.” Winston Churchill, commenting on the passing of conservative politician, Stanley Baldwin

       Growing up, my diet was a simple affair. Both of my parents had humble origins and even humbler palates. Meat and potatoes, potatoes and meat were the order of pretty much every day. These staples would often be supplemented by plain salads and boiled, sopping wet vegetables. My father, manly in ways I would never be, rarely cooked, and my mother resisted kitchen captivity except when domestically unavoidable. While I never thought of her as a stellar cook, she could whip up a fried or boiled dinner with the aplomb of a third world street vendor.
       Even under these adverse conditions, my appetite was not intimidated. I was not a finicky eater. While I may not have wanted to chow down with others as regularly as my family expected, displaying an early antisocial bent I am still troubled by, once settled in at my eating stall, I rarely left any food on the plate. That really was the key dining rule in our home: “Finish your plate before you leave the table, Willy,” was a frequent refrain from my pop. Food was not to be wasted.
      Often I would have hoovered my food down and be ready to leave the table before my mother even had a chance to join us. Clearly I was a rude little bugger, an observation my father would frequently make. He would say, “You’re a rude little bugger, isn’t he Marion?” And my mother would say, “Isn’t he what, Sterling?” And he would answer, “Isn’t he a rude little bugger? He doesn’t even have the decency to wait until you sit down.” And she would refrain, “Let the boy eat, Sterling. Can’t you see he’s hungry?”
      By the time my father had made his initial observation, he was half way through his first helping. He was a hefty man, setting an unavoidable standard for me, I’m afraid. He demonstrated his love for my mother, amongst other ways, by courageously seeking out seconds of her cooking at every turn. No matter what she prepared, he christened it “delicious, darling.” My mother would invariably look at him in adoration, turn back to what was occupying her on the stove and parry his praise with “you’re a fibber, you are. A woman can`t believe a word you say. You’d eat an old leather shoe if I cooked it just right.” She knew my father’s love was, in part, measured by food consumption and the absolute pleasure he found in eating.
      I didn`t really know it then but my mother found equal pleasure in simply having enough to cook. Simply having enough was such a joy for her. Growing up, there was often little or nothing to eat, except what the surrounding countryside and family garden could provide. She was raised on a small scrub farm in the shadow of the Rockies. Her parents were the children of farmers and grew what their ancestors grew; root vegetables. Parsnips and turnips headed the list. My mother was raised on a diet of rogue weed vegetables, heavily supplemented by roots. This Spartan lifestyle strongly influenced her culinary routine.
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