Junk Food Junkie

Yesterday was Groundhog’s Day and after both the men’s and women’s KSU basketball teams lost a huge cloud of despair spread over the Wildcat nation which means the groundhog (or our version—the prairie dog) did not see its shadow so we will have an early spring.

I do have a groundhog story to tell. The Aging Disco Diva considers herself to be one street smart cookie, but when she first strutted her neon and polyester stuff here in the midlands her lack of “country” knowledge lead to some interesting situations…. Every little town in the middle of the country has an annual “GroundHog” dinner….and they all featured cute little groundhog cartoon characters on their signs and on the flyers posted all over the place.

Now, though I was a gen-u-wine city slicker I knew what groundhogs were, of course. My brand new groom decided to take me to my first “Groundhog supper” and as we entered the Knights of Columbus Hall I innocently asked him what was going to be served and without blinking an eyelash he told me “Groundhogs of course” I knew that I HAD to have heard wrong so I asked him again and he repeated his answer and pointed to the bucktoothed little cartoon creature on the banner hanging over the room. Horrified I gasped “Are you friggin’ kidding me? No way….?” He then told me this elaborate tale about the annual “prairie dog round up" that took place the week before the dinner (I knew that the prairie dogs were considered to be a nuisance in this part of the country) and he had me almost believing it until some old codger who was eavesdropping piped in with “And I tell you what little gal, we had a hell of a time getting those tiny little lassos around their damn necks!” Yucka, yucka, yucka. Yeah, I figured it out quickly (Groundhog= ground hog...as in ground pig...as in pork sausage)

My hubby paid dearly (The Disco Diva has her ways, LOL) …. Of course, it did not stop him from inviting me to a Rocky Mountain Oyster Feed a few years later (and nearly convincing me) that mountain oysters were actually ancient bivalves that had mutated to live on land after the inland seas that covered all of the central United States retreated millions of years ago.