A Slice of Mutton

It is the first Sunday in August -- known as Fast Sunday in the LDS Church. And I am thinking about, really lusting for, mutton.

I don't know why that should be, either. I've only had mutton once in my entire life. But before I get to that, I want to mention the awful childhood experience of a smalahove for Christmas.

Smalahove is Norwegian for 'sheep's head.' It is the head of a mature sheep, with the wool burned off and the brains removed. It is then either boiled or roasted. They used to eat a lot of those things in Norway a century ago, and it is a big tourist draw in places like Voss in Norway today. And somehow my dad got a hold of a smoked smalahove one Christmas season when I was still in Dr. Denton's. He got it at work.

He brought many strange and wonderful things home from Arone's Bar & Grill, where he worked as a bartender. People gave him things, or they just left them at the bar when they stumbled home. There was no Lost & Found at Aarone's -- everything left behind went to Tork. He brought us a mechanical Charlie Weaver doll, that blew smoke rings out the ears.

I lost count of the number of metal plate and neon beer signs he lugged in the door. The names sounded like the prelude to an ethnic joke about Germans: Blatz, Schlitz, Lienenkugel, Stroh's, Schmidt, and Rheingold. He often said, in a wistful kind of voice, that he'd like to put a few of 'em up in the living room, to make it more friendly -- but mom would have none of it. Each sign was immediately exiled to the garage, where my older brother Billy eventually nabbed them all for his cabin on Green Lake. 

I remember innumerable pen knives, tiny plastic baseball bat key chains with GO TWINS! stenciled on them, churchkeys (bottle openers), rabbit foot charms, detective paperbacks with a luscious blonde always on the cover, coasters, poker chips, Zippo lighters, ivory backscratchers . . .

And the grisly smoked smalahove, which looked like something Bela Lugosi would find handy. It was wrapped in brown butcher's paper and deposited on the kitchen table, where it stared evilly at me. It did not smell very good, and not even my dad really wanted to try it. He said an old farmer had come into the bar that day and drank so much Schlitz that he grew weepy and generous and gave dad the sheep's head instead of taking it back to the farm as part of a yuletide feast. It hardly needs telling that mom whisked that abomination out into the garbage with screeching dispatch. But it had already lodged in my brain and gave me disturbing dreams where Santa came down the chimney with a grinning sheep head instead of his jolly old face and whiskers. 

That experience should have put me off eating sheep in any form for the rest of my life -- but years later when I hooked up with Ringling Brothers as a clown when the show was in Chicago, out by the Stockyards, there was a chophouse that featured a large mutton roast steaming on a brilliant copper platter in their picture window each day. I passed by it each day on my way to the arena, and eventually the aroma got to me. I had to try some mutton.  

I told Steve Smith, Chico Severinni, Tim Holst, and Kevin Bickford, all First of Mays like myself, what I planned to do -- and they decided to come along as well for a slice of mutton. None of them had ever had it before. 

The waiters gave each of us a smoking plate of mutton, with boiled red potatoes in their skins on the side. The mutton was fatty and gristly, but I enjoyed it. My companions gagged on it. Chico took one bite and spit it out as if he'd been poisoned.

"This is the worst sh*t I've ever had!" he exclaimed, pushing his plate as far away from him as possible. The consensus of the others was about the same. 

And get this: these fair weather friends blamed ME for inveigling them into wasting their money on such a lousy meal!

"You tricked us, Tork!" was the universal cry among them, the nitpicking pissants. It was Chico who suggested that they get up and leave all at once, sticking me with the bill. I objected vociferously, and the noise attracted the owner of the place -- a tall, imposing gentleman with a paunch the size of a medicine ball. When he heard about their disillusionment with the mutton he calmly said they could each have a grilled pork chop instead, at no extra cost. That settled things down. When he looked quizzically at me I shook my head; I liked my mutton just fine I told him. He beamed at me, patted me on the shoulder, and proclaimed that my meal was on the house. 

I guess I showed those guys something, huh?

But getting back to my current craving for mutton; there isn't a blessed place in Provo that serves mutton. But just as I was thinking of getting some lamb chops from Fresh Market down the street I got a Facebook message from my daughter-in-law, inviting me over for Sunday dinner. Since she's from Brazil, I imagine we'll have churrasco with arroz de coco. The lamb chops can wait until Monday, if I'm still in the mood.