The Bacon Gap

Have you noticed that the recent international crises seem to be centered around the parts of the world where there is a shortage of bacon? Iraq? Afghanistan? Iran? Israel? Do you think you can get a decent BLT in any of those places? I don't think so! We must look at all the wonderful, cultural expansion that bacon has brought us in the porcine pleased part of the planet.

For those of you who are embarrassed allow me to go first. I have a healthy, hearty and heavenly attachment to pigs. Now before you mind goes into the gutter allow me to clarify that I find the living version rather... how do I put this delicately?... totally freaking disgusting! Growing up we lived down the road from a massive pig farm. That place was huge! My dad became good friends with the owner due to mutual interests involving motorcycles, racing, farts and ham sandwiches. The ham and farts seemed to have some kind of correlation if you catch my drift. You didn't want to catch their drifts after a few ham sandwiches. They could both give the pigs a run for their money. But most days that place would stink to the highest heavens and the unholiest hells. On the bright side the farmer had made a really cool dirt racing track for my motorcycle. You learn to live with some discomforts for the sake of flying through the air on a Kawasaki 80. I was twelve. What did you think I would ride?

One nice thing about my father's fraternal friendship with the farmer was that we could buy a whole hog for not a whole lot of money. Our deep freezer would be filled with pork roasts, hams, sausage, pork steaks, and two kinds of bacon; regular bacon and what my dad called fresh side bacon. The regular bacon tasted like bacon. (I have a flair for the obvious, don't I?) The fresh side tasted like something else. I only tried it a few times but it didn't taste like bacon. Dad tried and tried to get someone else to try it and like it. It was like taking bacon and removing all the saltiness and taste and leaving behind the fat and the traces of meat that shriveled up worse that the real bacon. There are no words to describe the horror of taking what could have been bacon and creating something as monstrous as that stuff. Weep with me for the lost bacon.

Nothing compares to bacon. NOTHING! Well maybe turkey bacon but that is not real bacon. Sure it has the same flavor but if you fry it is only shrinks down to 93% of its original size. Bah! You call that bacon?! I laugh in your face! Ha ha! Real bacon when prepared properly or even improperly goes from 1 pound of bacon to 1.8 oz of finished product floating in a sea of grease. Yeah baby! That's what I'm talking about. And when you make it while camping on a Coleman stove in a cast iron skillet! Wait a moment while I wipe the drool off my keyboard. Now if you take that ocean of oil and float a fleet of eggs in there! The eggs and bacon with toast on a camping trip is one of the ways we know there is a God and that he loves us and want us to be very happy! It is also why my cardiologist has his own coronary when I tell him what I eat when I go camping.

Wait just a second! I've got the solution to all the problems in the Middle East. Let's invite everyone over to the Smoky Mountains to go camping. They think they don't like pork but I bet if they just smell the bacon and eggs on my Coleman they would come around. Israelis and Palestinians couldn't stay mad while eating one of my breakfasts. I bet we can solve some of the problems in Iran as we pass the pig. Do you suppose the different groups in Afghanistan are open to a porcine peace treaty? Does anyone have an 800 burner Coleman Stove I can borrow? It's for world peace. I'll share my Noble Prize Pork Peace Prize with you.