STATEMENT
“She wouldn’t let me have a single jar – not a one.” N
She canned faithfully from her garden for the past 30 years but never, ever, shared. Her husband had an ulcer and never went in for the canned goods so they just continued to amass. Scrupulously labeled through the years they just stood in attendance of an obsession.
My canning bible states that food stored more than a year has flavor and nutrition drop-off markedly and food stored over two years should not be consumed – or even fed to pigs in fear of botulism. These canned goods reach back to the early 1980’s.
There is a wide assortment of colorful molds in many of the jars, a paralytic reminder of the neurotoxins within - the deadly plenty.
In every-man-for-himself it is always, fuck you, I got mine - you go get yours. So, we glean and we hoard and we tarry for the moment when an evanescent sense of fulfillment may flutter past our souls. Enough is enough is never enough.
JMK - 2009