CityView Magazine

12 | October • 2014 BY BILL MCFADYEN Its Only Roadkill If You Leave It There T here is something unforgettable about new love relationships. For that inau- gural segment of time, no wrongs can be done. It is true in friendship and romance and presidential elections. ose first weeks together produce no sources of conflicts, aggravations or hesitations. My new romance with CityView has been the same. en the Editor chose "Food and Wine" as the theme for this current issue. e topic touches everyone, at least the food portion, so inclusion for the reader base is 100 percent. e poten- tial strain in the aforementioned love relationship, however, comes from my new Editor friend perhaps not fully understanding my eating habits. "Food" when seen photographically portrayed on hard-stock pages with candles and tablecloths intentionally stirs romantic tingles in the reader- ship. To cast me into that mix may well be the first blemish in the spring of our newfound love. My culinary divergence from the norm really started in my twenties, when Jim MacRae and I, decided to eat live crickets. ey were not the delicacy that I understand some Asian cultures purport them to be, but they were not all that bad. At least, it did not make us sick. We pro- gressed from crickets to earthworms and those are probably better le untried. ere was nothing palatable about them in the least, though I do think the common worm goes overlooked in those television survival programs. Not long thereaer, while travelling home one fall even- ing with my septuagenarian Uncle Reg from an outing in the deer woods, we were on the Beaver Dam side of the flashing red light on Highway 210. From out of the darkness, the very beast we had hunted that aernoon broadsided my truck, making a sizable dent in the rear quarter panel and self-in- flicting a fatal blow. We pulled over, checked the ice level in the cooler and set about salvaging the good parts. In my mid-30's, a brief courtship led to a whirlwind mar- riage. My tenure in the marital institution has had to survive its own pressures that arose from my eating habits. We live in McFadyen's Musings a lovely Eastover setting that I bought in 1991 and it has got- ten far better with my wife Susie's care. Children play. Birds sing. Dogs frolic with cats. Bunnies hop all over the yard. Unfortunately, those same bunnies are somewhat ignorant as to traffic patterns. One of the furry innocents once hopped onto the driveway just as I made the bend. Susie called me one evening while I was working late with obvious concern in her voice. She had thawed a gallon bag marked "stew beef " in my handwriting. She had been enjoying the carrots and potatoes and meat and gravy…until she mouthed a 3-inch long thigh- bone. She demanded to know what kind of beef had that skeletal make- up. I did nothing to quell her anger when I said that "stew beef " was like "band-aid" and "q-tip." It was a clas- sification, not a specific thing. ere was the deep-fried rattle- snake the White Lake teenagers ran over on a dirt bike trail. ere was the barbequed quail that my Jamie- boy and I scooped off the path when the Red-tailed hawk was so startled by us that he abandoned his kill. To continue to elaborate on these food sources though would be to exclude the other half of our theme, that be- ing the wine. I do not classify myself as well read on the subject of wine. I try to spend some amount of obligatory time each year with Middle Road's wine expert to sample his Bordeaux of the month. Yet, I must admit a certain disappointment at never hav- ing seen even one bottle from Lu-Mil Vineyards in his collection. In the research that I have done in preparation for this article, while I encounter a multitude of references to wine choices for wild meats, I do not see even one that describes wine choices for scavenged meat. So again at the risk of ending the honeymoon on which CityView and I have thus far been, I will make brief suggestions of my own. When eating meat that others have passed by (or "driven by" is, I suppose, a more accurate description) look for the bottle of North Carolina wine that has the Santa Clause on the label. Aer you pull the cork, the whole room smells like scuppernong grapes that wasps chew into on the vine, just before the grapes over-ripen and fall to the ground. If pan- cakes were eaten for supper, you could pour this delectable

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