When was the last time you wanted to eat a rotten apple? How about a piece of your hat? For me that’s been about never. Well, for this father it is certainly nothing new or even out of the ordinary for that matter.
In this short narrative, it details a father that has some rather bizarre eating habits that he developed during his experience with the Great Depression. No matter how old a piece of edible ‘goodness’ is, it seems to be fair game. Day, week, even year old items don’t bother this man at all. “There was nothing so rotten that it couldn’t be eaten.”
To actually understand the point behind this reading, one must look past the habits and rather look at the origin of this behavior in the first place. He learned to not waste anything; that anything could be saved. In a time like the Depression, money and food were hard to come by. It isn’t odd to him because it is all he knows.
I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to starve and have to eat anything edible, but this man has experienced that. The fact that he never left that state of mind just puts me in awe.