January 13, 2017      11:10 AM
Smith: This is No Chicken Fried Steak Story - All for Justice and Liberty
QR’s Liberal Columnist Glenn W. Smith argues that backwards and forwards, the final words of the Pledge of Allegiance are words progressives live by
Back
in the 1980s, the Texas Capitol Press Corps produced the popular Gridiron
Show, an annual ritual that raised money for scholarships and spoofed
political figures. One bit in the 1988 Gridiron spectacular made fun of George H.W. Bush’s claim that his side
that election year was more patriotic than the other side.
Although
I was a mere alumnus of press corps by then, I was given a cameo role. The American-Statesman’s
Larry Besaw,
one of the quickest wits in Texas, played an MC calling for an audience volunteer
who could say our Pledge of Allegiance forwards and backwards. I was that
audience “volunteer.”
Besaw, by the way, once concocted out of whole tablecloth
an origin story for the chicken fried steak, publishing it in the Statesman as
a humor piece. He wrote that it was invented in 1911 in Lamesa
by “unemployed draw bridge oiler Jimmie
Don Perkins working as a short order cook.”
Is there any kind of draw bridge oiler other than an unemployed one?
This
piece of steak-in-cheek fake news was soon picked up as fact. It made the Smithsonian.
Rep. Tom Craddick even passed a
resolution honoring Lamesa’s role in the culinary
milestone. (Admit it, “milestone” is a good word for a chicken fried prepared
by chefs of lesser skill than Jimmie Don, and there are a lot of them.)
I
digress.
The full column by Glenn W. Smith is in the R&D Department.
By Glenn W. Smith
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