Sell the horse,
she says. Sell the horse! You want to
keep fit, sell the horse. So I sell the horse. It seemed like a good idea
at the time. Horses are expensive,
she says, rubbing her fingers together. Horses
eat, need the vet, need shoes. I need
shoes, she says, lifting one foot onto the table. Horses are old-fashioned, she says, and goes back to her magazine.
So I sell the horse.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
And then she said burn
the cart. Burn the cart! After all,
she reasoned — without a horse, how can
you pull a cart? You want to keep
warm, burn the cart. There is plenty of firewood in a cart. It was the
middle of winter, and snow lay thick on the ground. It seemed like a good idea.
So I burn the cart.
Of course, in the winter you can use the sled. The sled is
designed to go easy on snow.
In the summer, not so much.
Still, I’m fit. It’s one foot in front of the other all day
long pulling this sled across the pasture while the cows look on. I know what
they’re thinking: they’re thinking here I am wearing a fine brass bell doing
nothing but sunning myself all day and there he goes, wearing a funny hat,
dragging cheese back to his fat wife.
The Cooking of Germany,
Time-Life Books, 1969
Also from this book: Sauerkraut Stuffed Pineapple, Potato Pancakes, A Fate Worse Than Death, Ludwig Boltzmann's Steak Tartar