Posted on 10/01/2012 12:23:41 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
DEAD possums litter the roads of the southern United States and whenever Bernie Smith encounters another fallen marsupial he pulls over and hurls the corpse into the back of his truck.
One man's detritus is another man's feast: cooked slowly with potato, carrot and celery, the meat becomes tender in a rich and spicy stew known as burgoo.
Mr Smith, 67, was showing off this traditional technique at the annual Road Kill Cook-Off festival in Marlinton, West Virginia, an isolated town nestled in the Appalachian mountains. Thousands were on hand this weekend to compare his casserole with barbecue squirrel, bear meatloaf and grilled porcupine skewers.
For the Republican Party organisers fanning out across the event, this ought to be fertile ground. These rural, white Christians, once dismissed as "hillbillies", have been central to the party's electoral success since the Nixon era.
Certainly, the hostility towards President Barack Obama was near universal. Mr Smith, a pharmacist from North Carolina, began his critique along policy lines; he dislikes the Administration's desire to raise tax and hates the White House vision on energy and coal. In a lowered voice, he also confided that he thought Mr Obama was a secret believer in the Islamic faith.
"It's obvious he is," he whispered. "The reading I've done: the way he talks about the Koran, you wouldn't do that unless you were a Muslim." Mr Smith, who pronounced the Islamic holy book "key-ran", said people were still distrustful of Mr Obama but there was less talk about his race now than there had been four years ago.
But in a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey of the Bible Belt, which stretches from Texas to Virginia, 20 per cent of white lower and middle income voters still said they would be less likely to vote for an African-American candidate.
Despite this, Mitt Romney engendered little excitement. Lane Jack, 38, who was browsing the stalls with his wife and a small pig on a leash, said he was unsure how to vote in November.
"With everything Romney's been caught saying, I don't see how you could trust him," he said. "I don't think he understands us." Mr Jack, who owns a small T-shirt printing company, agrees with 38 per cent of voters in the survey who said they would be less likely to vote for a "very wealthy" candidate. Another 35 per cent said they were less likely to vote for a Mormon.
"We're so damn poor around here we didn't know there was a recession," said Mike Hollingsworth, a self-employed handyman and logger. "I was taught growing up that anyone could be president. Looking at people like Romney I don't know if I believe that any more."
While Mr Romney is likely to pick up most states below the Mason-Dixon line, he is struggling in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, key swing states along the Appalachian trail. Speaking as she sauteed wild deer for her deep-fried venison balls, Shawn Smith said the US President must put faith at the heart of the White House. She was unconvinced that Mr Romney's Mormonism would suffice. "There's a dark side to Romney that I don't think we can trust," she said.
With the state leaving space on the ballot box for people to write what they want, the winner of the Miss Road Kill, West Virginia contest, Joy Hammond, knew exactly how she would be voting, and said she was lobbying friends to do the same. "I'm writing in 'Clint Eastwood'," she said.
(I'm not so sure this would be the case if Hildebeast were running, though)
Trying to get the hillbilly vote...is that a leftist racial slur by any chance - like Obama trying to get the n!@@er vote and the wetback vote? Socialists are so predictable.
Never under estimate the stupidity of a union member.
My wife and I lived in Raleigh in the late 1980’s and we use to wonder who was worse in the area: the northern left wing idiots or the eastern left wing idiots.
The fact that they start out with a lie is a reliable indicator that the rest of what they write is crap also.
First, people don’t eat road kill. Few eat possums and those that do simply shoot them or trap them. They’re not hard to find.
Second, drive through West Virginia, Romney is a lock and INEC.
An elderly man I worked with told me once that during the Great Depression his family and a lot of others ate groundhogs and he said they are great. They don’t scavenge and they are grass and plant eaters. One thing about it....we will never starve around here. We have groundhogs everywhere. LOL
Kinda says it all for me, although I did once pick up a fresh goose-kill. I saw the car hit it!
Pissed-off the driver who hit it 'cause he was coming back for it ....................................... FRegards
You don’t eat road kill. And yes, us country folks, hillbillies, piney woods folk, rednecks, crackers, whatever you want to call us, know this.
Apparently, the Aussie boob who wrote the article missed one crucial point in the description of the event:
Real roadkill isn't used, but contestants must use the meat of animals commonly found on the side of the road.From: wvliving.com article
Woodchucks? They burrow, so I’d think they’d taste of mud.
Well, they certainly are fat enough, but it must be something to hunt them, since they burrow and are mean as all get out. The dog used to corner them when they got under the deck and as good a hunter as he was, he never got close enough to one to kill it. Lots of snarling and posturing from both of them!
Woodchucks? They burrow, so I’d think they’d taste of mud.
Well, they certainly are fat enough, but it must be something to hunt them, since they burrow and are mean as all get out. The dog used to corner them when they got under the deck and as good a hunter as he was, he never got close enough to one to kill it. Lots of snarling and posturing from both of them!
I’ve known of Groundhogs to kill a dog. A .22 Magnum rifle with scope will get them better than a dog. :-)
He said they are very good eating so I suspect they don’t taste like mud. They dig. They don’t eat the mud. It’s piled up outside the burrow. They have deadly claws for digging and teeth that will rip a dog apart.
those from the upper midwest are pretty much southerners with funny accents except from the Union blue who are clustered in all those neighborhoods around Spring Hill and Thompson's Station
whites from Detroit I know here are under no illusions about what Obamaworld is really like and even some UAW guys are quietly not Democrats
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