April 20, 2021 • 42 mins
Times were tough during the Great Depression. Economic unrest, massive migration and falling crops left many people struggling to survive -- even the simple task of finding food from one day to the next became increasingly challenging. Amid this chaos Dr. T. W. Stallings saw an opportunity: If he could convince the good people of Oklahoma to start eating crows the way they ate other birds like ducks or chickens, he could save some lives (and, perhaps more importantly, finally have his revenge on crows).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio KA.
(00:27):
Welcome to Ridiculous History. Thanks again as always for tuning in, folks.
Shout out to our super producer, Casey the Crow Pegrams.
Shout out to our guest producer Andrew the Raven Howard.
Uh they called me Ben, I I didn't think of
bird nicknames for the for us. That's that's as far
as I got. You know, I'm triggered by bird nicknames. Ben,
(00:49):
Thank you for for going giving me one. No, of course, Noll,
of course. This is Uh. This is an interesting episode
for both of us today because as you know, ride
or die nol is. You know you're you're not a
fan of birds for some I would say, some perfectly
valid reasons. Well, I mean it depends, you know. I
(01:10):
think it's possible that I have a manufactured, implanted memory
of being dive bomb attacked by seagulls at the beach
with my grandfather as a youth, But that may or
may not have actually happened. It might just be one
of the story I tell myself to explain my fear
of birds. I was talking about this with my girl
for the other night. I think I'm more afraid of
like land walking birds that can really come at you,
(01:31):
you know, with wobbly goose type necks, or like ostriches
and stuff, or shoe bill yeah, exactly, or like an
emu or god forbid, a castuary. You ever seen those monsters.
They can apparently disembowl you with a single claw, like
in the Jurassic Park the book. I didn't make it
to the movie, but yeah, there's kind of like weird dinosaurs.
And but I know that you're a fan of the corvids,
(01:52):
and we've talked about this multiple times on this and
other shows. Um, I think it's a dream of yours
to one day command an army of corvitte that can
do your bidding, but you would do stuff for them too,
would be like a quid pro quote type arrangement. Yeah. Yeah,
So I'm I'm fascinated by the study of what is
called non human intelligence, and corvids are brilliant. I just
(02:13):
want to hang out with them. I want to have
a Corvid crew, and I'd prefer ravens, but you know,
I will accept crows. Uh. The at the most extreme version.
It reminds me of the television adaptation of True Blood. Uh. Spoilers,
there's a weird subplot as this show declined in quality
(02:35):
about a vampire who has kind of created this relationship
with werewolves and it's a symbiotic relationship and maybe maybe
it would be something like that with crows. But today's
episode is about a guy named Dr. T. W. Stallings
who completely fundamentally disagrees with my, uh, with my opinion
(02:58):
of crows. No, this guy hated them. Well, I mean,
to be fair, Ben, You're not a farmer during the
Great Depression, so crows are not really wreck in your
shop the way they were, uh Dr T. W. Stallings
and many other folks who were desperately in need of
a bountiful harvest. Right. So, in the nineteen thirties, crows,
(03:21):
as in Western civilization in general outside of of Ben
for the most part, were viewed as disease vectors. You know,
often have bad reputations in terms of superstition, like black cats. Um,
sort of like this uh concept of the lore of
the of the crow as being some sort of familiar
(03:42):
to like the devil or like you know, witches or
were warlocks or whatever. But most importantly, they were crop stealers.
I think we all know about the scarecrow. That's a
thing probably was successful in varying degrees. You think they
would have gotten used to it them being so smart
and all right, then yeah, that's the thing. Part of
(04:03):
the reason that crows and ravens can be such pest
is because they are intelligent enough to think ahead and
to plan more efficient ways to steal things basically, And
so yeah, you're you're absolutely right, dude, to a crow
or raven. You know, any kind of corvid might be
(04:24):
scared off by a human like figure or effigy in
a field for a short amount of time, but once
they realize, hey, this thing looks like a person but
it doesn't move, then it's just another tree basically, then
they're all about it totally. And I think the most
recent appearance of corvid's in our podcast life was on
(04:46):
a Strange News episode of Stuff That I Want You
to Know, where we discussed a study that showed that
corvids actually have something called meta cognition, which is something
that humans have, which that's apart from their animals. Metic
cognition is quite literally thinking about thinking. So to your point,
then they can plan, they can observe, and they can
(05:08):
change their behavior accordingly, which is not not something to
sneeze at, you know, for a for a tiny what
what some people might malign as like bird brains or whatever.
You know, that is not a thing with these guys,
right right, And you know, honestly, they are exceptional in
the avian field, but they've used their powers for trickery
(05:28):
and to get over on humans. So it does make
sense that Dr. T. W. Stallings and many other people
in Oklahoma in the nineteen thirties, as he said, would
not care for these birds. It's already a very difficult
proposition to be a farmer, even if there is not
a crushing economic depression under way. So our episode today
(05:53):
concerns Dr. Stallings push throughout the state of Oklahoma to
get more of his fellow Oklahoma residents to start hunting
and eating crows. Yeah, and eventually Oklahoma's governor even got
in on the mix. He founded something called the State
(06:16):
House Crow Meat Lovers Association. And you know, Noel, you
and I both love uh talking about food. We're both
adventurous eaters. Um, we're gonna have to get to ah,
We're gonna have to get through some of the problems
with eating crow. I think I think we are. And
I gotta say, the crow meat Lover's pizza sounds like
(06:39):
the worst pizza ever of all time. Oh god, yeah,
unless it's spoiled meat and it's a pizza just for crows. Yeah,
maybe with also like milk curds sprinkled on top or something. Um,
you know. We gotta remember though, in addition to all
this crow hate, you know, literally just wanting to kill
them because they were screwing up people's crops. It was
(07:00):
the Great Depression and meat was scarce, so any meat
you could get would be considered like a premium kind
of like that. Even like, you know, typically people were
subsisting on things like you know, dry goods like beans
and pasta and and uh, you know, hominy for example,
like in the South, right, So meat would have been
like a special treat kind of even crow meat. So
(07:21):
we're gonna get again, We're gonna get into some of
the ways this was prepared. But let's just backtrack to
nineteen thirty six, when the residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma began
to kind of jump on board this crow eating bandwagon.
The butcher's. Local butchers would send their kids out into
the fields to kill and collect crow carcasses. They got
(07:45):
a dollar fifty. First I was reading this and I
was like, oh, a dollar fifty a crow, that seems reasonable. No,
it was a dollar fifty a dozen of crows, which
is uh yeah. And they would bring them back, chopped
their heads off, trust them up, and serve them, I imagine, however,
but again we're gonn give me some recipes later. And
this even became like remember how when like lobster was
like trash food, and like, like servants even petitioned the
(08:09):
government to force their masters not to serve them lobster
more than three times a week or something like that.
The crow was starting to occupy something of of a
you know, space like that, and that it was going
to be suggested as being like a staple food in
hospitals and just kind of like again like just the
go to meat of the era. Yeah. Yeah, And so
(08:31):
you can get a perspective on how these kids were
incentivized to hunt crows in batches of a dozen at
a time. Our inflation calculator tells us that one dollar
nine is equivalent to just a little bit over nineteen
dollars today, So there was some money for some kids there. Sure, yeah,
but you're right. People were embracing this idea on multiple
(08:54):
organizational levels. One science teacher in Oklahoma, Miss odd Firth,
even established a class exclusively about how to cook crows.
That's a that's a niche education right there. And uh
Dr T. W. Stallings himself not a farmer, He was
(09:16):
the county health superintendent, and like you said, he was
a vociferous, self proclaimed crow hater. He said that crows
were a serious problem for Oklahoma farmers, a problem that
had only gotten worse in the years leading up to
the mid nineties, and so he had this Bernese vibe
(09:37):
about him. The said, where Bernet's vibe? He said, all right,
we're gonna get the hearts and minds of our fellow
Oklahoma's focus on exterminating and eating crows so that we're
not just killing them for no reason. And we're gonna
do this, he said, in a lightbulb moment, through a
series of what I will call crow banquets. So we're
(09:57):
gonna trick people, We're gon because people love that, right,
So we're gonna we're gonna invite all these folks over.
We're gonna cook them a nice sumptuous meal, because it's
hard to turn down a hot meal in the depression.
And then after they've eaten their fill and they're talking
about how how good this was, this meal was, we're
(10:19):
going to tell them that they had, in fact dined
on crows and he had a recipe for it too.
It doesn't sound half bad, to be honest. I mean,
chrow meat is notorious for being dry and stringy. I've
heard it described as tasting kind of livery. But at
the same time, I like liver. I like liver and onions.
(10:39):
I wouldn't eat like liver prepared many other ways, but
if it's like fried and like you know, rolled in
a nice gravy, it can it can be pretty palatable
with you know, mushrooms and onion or something like that.
But they were doing something very similar with this. They
were coating, you know, plucking them, obviously coating them with lard,
which would you know, help keep them oyster, and then
(11:01):
cooking them in a sealed cast iron pan, likely kind
of a slow heat um so that it would kind
of stay as tender as possible, and you know, seasoned
and added celery and likely carrots and maybe some other
things like you might do with, you know, a roasted
chicken perhaps um, and then of course finishing all with
lots of gravy. Three crows to a person does a
(11:24):
meal make? And Stallings really was into this. He had
his reasons in terms of just like thinking about it
in terms of public health, I suppose, which is kind
of weird considering that you know, these crows were considered
diseased and vectors for disease and he was the head
of the health department. He was a big proponent for
(11:45):
people eating these. I wonder how they tested them to
make sure they weren't like contaminated or something that. Well,
that's another that's he's kind of if if crows in
Oklahoma in the nineties are smurfs, then this guy's Stallings
is definitely their artmel right. It's it's weird. They got
pressed for this too. In the nineteen thirties, The Pittsburgh
(12:07):
Post Gazette reported this enthusiasm for consuming crow in In
ninety six, Atlanta Constitution, which now exists as the Atlanta
Journal Constitution, reported how the then governor E. W. Marlin
and a group of state officials went to one of
these crow banquets and Marlin was so impressed. The story
(12:31):
goes that that caused him to establish this state house
Crow meat Lovers Association. And you know, crows are omnivorous
right in many ways their vacuum cleaners. If you end
up feeding a crow, all always be cautious about feeding
wild animals. Usually not a great idea. But if you
end up feeding and crow, the main thing you have
(12:53):
to look out for is not feeding them stuff that
has a lot of as salt. But if you end
up eating a crow, you're right, no, they they've got
a gamey taste. They can get grainy and stringy and tough,
but they're they're dark meat. So if you prepare them
correctly from what I understand, I haven't done this, they
can end up tasting a little bit like duck or goose,
(13:15):
which can be you know, pretty delectable. Uh huh. I
don't think I ever had a goose, but I can't.
I always think of that seat in the office where
it's a Christmas episode and Dwight finds a goose that's
been hit on the side of the road and brings
it into the office, you know, and he's supposedly gonna
trust it up and you know, clean it right there
and cook it for so he's like as a Christmas miracle,
(13:36):
and of course they make him take it outside. But duck,
I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it
is the darker of the dark meat. Like if if
you think dark meat, chicken taste gamy, duck is probably
gonna be extra that thing. But it's also fatty, which
bothers some people. But if you're into cooking, one thing
you can do with duck is cook it on our
(13:58):
rack and then under a rack, slice up some potatoes
and put them underneath the duck so the drippings dripped
down onto the potatoes. Then you get like duck fat
fried potatoes, which has a real rich flavor to it. Um.
Speaking of which, there were a lot of sacrifices that
had to be made in the Great Depression, like instead
of butter, they use drippings or fat. So probably having
(14:20):
fatty you know, dark meat was probably a good thing
because it made for more drippings they could then use
in place of butter. Right, yeah, yeah, there's a great
book that details this called Paradox of Plenty of Social
History of Eating in Modern America. This is the kind
of specific reference work that I love, just like the
Kolanski's book about salt oh Ben. I had to bring
(14:42):
up to some friends the other day. Uh, your fascination
with very specific books. And if I'm not mistaken, you
said you own a book exclusively on halibut cod God. Okay,
my bad, I thought, because halibit came up and I
was like, pretty sure my partner has a book exclusively
on haliban. It's uh, yeah, it's it's uh. I would,
by the way, I would totally buy and devour a
(15:05):
book about haliban, just for the Haliban, just for the Haliban.
So in this book by Harvey Levinstein, he talks about
the privation people face because, for a long long time,
and still to a degree here in the States, eating
is a social opportunity. It's when you see your friends,
it's when you spend quality time with your family. And
(15:28):
it was tough for people to adjust to having to
change this pattern. During the depression. Instead of three meals
a day, might have to like you said, no, people
went back to very affordable grains and carved staples, right
corn meal, pasta, beans, pancakes. The most common complaint people
(15:50):
had at this time was that they were they were
getting tired of eating, of eating the same stuff day
in day out. Meats, fruits, a lot of other delicate
sees like sweets pretty much disappeared due to either scarcity
or affordability at this point, Like there were riots in
small towns across the country where people were literally shouting,
(16:13):
we want food. We will not let our children starve. Yeah,
at least they weren't shouting, we want more variety, we
will not eat beans again, because that would be a
little I mean, at least they had something. No, it's true.
And the people that had the beans and the pasta,
and if they were lucky eggs, which really did take
(16:34):
the places of meat, you know, because meats were just
so hard to come by, they kind of had it good,
you know. But it was it was pretty widespread, and
of course they were you know, the swells in their
ivory towers that probably had more than the rest of us.
But yeah, in general, people were having to really subsist
and then kind of scraped to get by. Not to
(16:54):
mention that that's the that's the big thing about the
Great Depression, right it was. It was the perfect storm
of horrible, horrible things happening. One of which was uh,
it would have exacerbated the issue of the crows, you know,
attacking the crops. It was drought that already dried up
crops all over the South. Share croppers in Alabama they
referred to their diet as the three M diet, which
(17:16):
was salt, pork, was the M, meat, corn meal, and molasses.
Why the molasses. That dessert was that like the pudding
cup of the Great Depression. So there are things called breadlines.
I believe it's very similar to a soup kitchen ben
if I'm not mistaken. Like a breadline is like a
free handouts for for people in desperate situations or who
are homeless. Yeah, it's for people who found themselves houseless
(17:40):
or they were unable to find work. That was the majority.
The majority of people were unemployed and fighting to stay
in their homes or in their towns or with their relatives.
And so you would wait in the in these long
literal lines to get some sort of sustenance and it
would be usually some kind of bread, especially in the
(18:00):
North and and and like a lot of gangsters and
criminals like Paublo Escobar for example, made a name for
himself by giving food and clothes and things to less
fortunate people who lived around the area of Medine where
he did business. Al Capone ran a breadline, you know,
to kind of I think probably engender some positive feelings
(18:23):
among the people that he, like you know, was around
in his in his actual neighborhoods. Yeah, like the Yakuza
helping disaster stricken areas of Japan after earthquakes or other
natural disasters. Do you know they've also been involved in
organizing Halloween things. I jumped out, it's so weirdly adhering,
But maybe a story for another You know, it's interesting
(18:51):
because I have some roots in Appalachia and I can
confirm from accounts of ancestors some of the horror story.
But what occurred for those folks in in that time,
Like one strategy was that children would eat on alternate days.
I had a relative who would tell my parents about
(19:13):
times where they were convinced that they were going to starve,
only to have dug up an old frozen patch of
potatoes and eaten those potatoes that were frozen in the ground,
which gave them just enough sustenance to soldier on. But
you know, urban areas, rural areas alike, they were all
(19:35):
crushed by this. Ninety thousand businesses completely shut their doors,
fifty million people lose their jobs, get their wages cut
in half. If you read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck,
he's so exaggerating. Now, it's so good, and it's one
of the first books that I was like, oh, this
(19:55):
is a painting a picture, this is how it really was.
It just feels like you're there and yeah, I mean
spoiler alert, no, I'm not gonna do but at the
end there's something that's absolutely heartbreaking that a character has
to do to survive. Yeah. Yeah, that is a harrowing book.
And it's based on this period of time in a
realistic way. Twenty people that we know of committed suicide,
(20:18):
which means certainly more ten thousand banks collapsed. The effects
of the Great Depression remain in the modern day and
in a lot of ways. And that's that's the context
in which this idea of eating crow occurs. Like people
are going especially rural areas, people are saying, look, if
(20:39):
I don't have two nickels to rub together to go
to a deli, well then I'll just do what my
grandparents are great grandparents did and I'll just hunt game,
you know, the way like people in rural areas will
still hunt game for a reliable source of nutrition today. Absolutely, yeah,
and pro became an alternative, viable routine. There was not
(21:00):
one person in this area of Oklahoma said yeah, I'm
too good for it. Yeah, and it was you know,
it was it was a kind of two pronged thing
right where it was giving them some variation in their
diets or perhaps the only thing they had. You know,
that certainly could have been the case for many, But
it also was helping out the farmers and potentially staving
(21:22):
off that further loss of of of productivity to to
their to their crops. So you know, it seemed like
kind of helping out your neighbor in addition to like
getting a meal in you. But this was not just
an Oklahoma thing, by the way. It started to really spread,
Like you saw reports out of Kansas, Georgia, Washington State,
Illinois reporting this kind of surge in public interest in
(21:45):
eating these birds. In August of n approximately two Americans
per day wrote to the Department of Agriculture asking for
details on quote, how crows might be cooked, stewed, fried,
or roasted, and how crow broth can be made. Probably,
do you think that's the that's the question for the
(22:07):
Department of agg seems more like a good housekeeping kind
of letter, you know, or like an Emily Post situation. Well,
it was. It was a different time. You know, people
in general wrote letters were offted. But but I I
believe you are correct. They eventually probably had to put
an intern on that. The fact that crews were plentiful
(22:27):
in Oklahoma and many other parts of the country was
helpful to stallings cause crow hunting clubs started popping up
and there was sort of a a war maybe campaign
is a better word for public favor to this approach
of eating crew because in addition to having all these
(22:47):
heavy dark folkloric associations or connotations, crews are scavengers, and
so they were known to eat garbage, and so people thought, look,
if I'm eating a crow, am I kind of just
eating garbage with an extra step? Is that just like
eating trash with extra steps? And uh? Yes and no? Right,
(23:09):
I mean, well, catfish is good now, it's very true,
and so so I yeah, but I would also say
yes and no in that they're not clean, you know
what I mean? Like you really have to. But I
guess you would boil them, probably to get the feathers
to pop off, and then pluck them like you do.
So I suppose they're being like sanitized, but still just
(23:30):
the whole concept just really gives me the creeps. Yeah,
and you know, to be clear, I said, there was
no one in it Oklahoma at the time who automatically
said they were too good for it. But this was
not everybody's favorite new food, and there were a couple
of people outside of Oklahoma who are just like, forget this,
We'll we'll get to them. Uh. But opinions vary on
(23:52):
how this tasted for a lot of people as a
curiosity or a kind of a desperate measure, or was
a novelty. And like we said, they are gamy, they
are dark meat. So a lot of the recipes that
you see are similar to recipes that you can see
for other gamey, tasty meat. You have as much like
(24:15):
seasoning as possible in the mix to make it make
it go down a little bit smoother. Sure, I mean,
you know, like I love cooking with chicken thighs, but
it's gotta be really really well seasoned. Whereas a chicken breast.
You know, you could probably eat it, which is a
little salt and pepper and it tastes pretty good. And
then to me, the chicken thigh is the perfect level
(24:35):
of gamey. I love this too, by the way, But
I don't think we mentioned some folks. They were really
trying to up the idea of the crow. So there
were even people that referred to them as black partridges. Uh.
It's just just kind of like, you know, a crow
by any other name still tastes like crow. But there
was this chef at the hotel Sherman named from non
(24:58):
potrais pant that makes sense, punt Trough who it was,
is a very fancy hotel, and he had a dish
called crow on casserole. Uh. And if if I may,
I'm just gonna read a little bit of the recipe.
It sounds this sounds great. Actually, this recipe is specific
enough to cook it, I think. So he skinned and
(25:18):
dress like we said, put in a pan with butter,
add garlic, then a third cup of white wine, which
most people wouldn't have. They would not That's what I'm saying.
This is like total shabby chic kind of situation, right. Uh.
Strong veal gravy, which is already going to have a
little bit of a livery kind of game equality to it. Right,
(25:39):
Three tablespoons and then soybeans sauce. Does that mean soy sauce? Yes, yes,
I think that's what that means, poured over the crow meat.
And then the birds are cooked in a covered dish
for two hours. Again that low and slow. It's got
to be young birds. Take this goes to quote directly
from the recipe. Young birds taken in the spring required
just one hour, Chef punt Row said. And then of
(26:01):
course mushrooms, small cubes of fried salt pork, and small
glazed onions. Sounds pretty good. And people who tried this
fancy like elevated cuisine approach overwhelmingly liked it. People had said,
you know this surprisingly and I like it a little
(26:21):
bit better than wild duck. And it's tasty and it's
deliciously prepared. But as we said, some people, not in
Oklahoma but other places felt like they were already too
good for this, and they looked down their nose at it.
There was one chef in Atlanta ninety six who said,
roast crow bab b a h. People used to say
(26:44):
that bah bah, Yeah, where's the humbug? Folks just don't
go in for that kind of meat. So far as
I'm concerned, to eat and crow will continue to be
nothing but a political expression. It's interesting, that's a really
no no. I think we I think we've been sort
of alluding to this, uh, and that it was almost
(27:04):
like a patriotic act to kill the crows at least
because you were kind of helping your your neighbor, your
farming neighbors. But also it was kind of an act
of what's the word I'm looking for, like societal kind
of like it was sort of like an act of
bringing everyone together behind like a common enemy, right in
a time where people felt desperately out of control. There's
(27:25):
an account from um The Oklahoman from a woman named
Sue Simpson who cooked this meat for a husband, talking
about quote, feeling that it might be the patriotic thing
to do. I bought some and baked crow for dinner.
As I recall, there was not enough meat on the
bones to make it worthwhile. I do not remember how
it tasted, but I do know that I did try
to eat it. My husband said that he did not
(27:46):
mind eating crow. As in quotes. If he had done
something to apologize for but did not expect to see it,
served to dinner, and to please not do it again
right Like you know, it takes a lot to make
him marriage work. It was on his fee is in queues.
It's true. This was a trend that came about of desperation.
(28:06):
It had this patina of patriotism, and it was meant
as a way of combating loss of crops. But after
times became less desperate, this trend fizzled. There was one
person who didn't give up on it, and you can
guess who he is. Fellow ridiculous historians. Dr T. W.
Stalls himself. He was full gargamel, as they say in Gattica.
(28:30):
He saved nothing for the swim back. Uh. He was
as late as ninety seven he was finding every reporter
that would listen to him and extolling the virtues of
eating crows. I wonder if he had a situation where
he got like attacked by one or something as a kid.
And that's where we are today. If you go to
(28:50):
almost any restaurant in the US, it will be virtually
impossible to find a genuine like dish made of crow
it's even less common than turtle soup, which we talked
about in the past, which is, you know, mainly common
in New Orleans, Maryland and parts of DC. Now, yeah,
(29:11):
and then you'll, you know, you'll you'll go to some
fancy restaurants, so you'll see things like squab or other
like gamy weird small birds on the menu as kind
of a flex like, look look at how amazing our
cooking is that we can make this weird trash bird
tastes good. But I don't even know if like you know,
Heston Blumenthal would try messing with crow. Maybe our friend
(29:32):
Richard Blaze, maybe he might take a shot at it.
But but the but most you're right, most folks won't.
This has become kind of a closed chapter in the
history book. But it leaves us with another conversation that
we've talked about a little bit in the past. There
are so many somewhat arbitrary cultural taboos about what is
(29:57):
or is not fit to eat here in the u US,
in the West overall. And if there hadn't been the
Great Depression, crows would have been five people wouldn't have
been trying to eat them. And what is now referred
to as kind of the crow craze raises questions about
what makes us consider something edible or something disgusting, and
(30:20):
how culturally changeable or fluid these things might be like that,
like nutria is another example, or raccoons or I think
everybody's fine with eating alligators now right. It does seem
that way, But there's even a broader conversation than that.
And we've talked about this too. It's like the whole
socially acceptable lime for like, it's okay to eat rabbit
(30:44):
to some, but definitely not okay to eat cat. You know,
at least in the United States. Crow just seems like
it's nasty and probably not necessary and and really just
probably limited to an active desperation. There's a really gross
scene and always sunny in Philadelphia. You might remember it
and fight like a crow, Fight like a crow. But
(31:05):
he eats a crow and it's like tainted or something,
and he starts like getting violently ill Frank's character. You're Frank,
the Danny de Vito's character, and I think he almost
starts like hallucinating off of the rotten crow or the
tainted crow or something like that. But yeah, it definitely
does not seem like. I mean, I think even animals
(31:25):
would probably steer away from it if they could. It's
funny because the whole time we're researching this episode, I
just kept rewatching clips of the Fight Milk episode of
Always Stunny in Philadelphia with like crow eggs and some
kind of nutritional substance in a ton of like vodka.
I think it was disgusting. But what is that show
(31:48):
not given us? It hasn't given us something that we're
going to give you now, folks, this had to be
occurring to a lot of our fellow listeners today. Is
this the origin of the old saying to eat crow? Luckily,
(32:11):
according to our good friend Man Guess had a coutur,
co founder of Mental Floss and a guy who actually
hangs out with us, it's not true. It's also the
perfect time to wish him the absolute best in his
new venture. You were very sad to lose him at
the company as a colleague, but we will remain dear friends.
(32:31):
Been been with him for a long time and he's
a lovely guy. But yeah, he wrote this article himself
back when he was still a Mental Floss and he
traced the origin of the expression to eat crow somewhere
completely different. Yeah. Yeah, so when when you say to
eat crow, it kind of has this feeling of like
other expressions like oh he had egg on his face
(32:54):
or uh, oh they had to eat humble pie. De
crow means to humiliate onesell and there's a legend about
it that dates back to eighteen twelve. During a truce
in the War of eighteen twelve, Apparently a guy from
New England walked over to the British camp to do
some hunting and he got irritated because he's like, uh,
(33:16):
we're in the middle of a war. I can't find
any deer or rabbit or what have you. I'm just
gonna shoot the first thing I see. And the first
thing he saw was a crew and he shot it.
But a British guy, a British officer heard the gunshot right, Yes,
that's right, And the British officer gave the American props
on his marksmanship and then asked him to see the weapon,
(33:40):
to hold the weapon um with which he had he
had made this crack shot and uh being a bit
on the gullible side. Um. The American handed over the weapon,
after which, of course the British officer turned it on
him and yelled at him and basically humiliated him and
forced him to eat a bite of the crow that
(34:02):
he had just killed, uncooked feathers and all yeah. Uh.
And the guy tried to beg but you know what
could he do? The British dude had his guns, so
he ate a piece of the crow. The officer returned
his firearms, said okay, go home, get out of here,
away with you. Uh. And before the British guy could leave,
(34:27):
the new Englander was very angry, turned the gun on
the officer and made him eat the rest of the
burt also uncooked, also unplucked. Uh. The story concludes that
the British officer was furious. The next day he went
to the American camp and he demanded retribution and satisfaction.
The US commanding officers had the soldier brought to him
(34:49):
and they said, you know, have you seen this guy before,
this British dude. And the soldier was trying to lie
pro very cape, but he couldn't, so eventually he stuttered, yes, Captain,
I dined with him yesterday. And that's that's the joke.
They have heard other versions of this as a joke.
(35:11):
I heard one. It was pretty popular in the military
about this occurring in um, the Sahara or the Middle East,
but it was a much filthier version because it was
like the military version, it wasn't crow they were eating. Yeah,
I don't know. I love this account. This is a
great story. I still have to wonder if if it's
(35:32):
not a little in dispute as to whether it came
from this or the idea of like eating crow as
being sort of like the worst case scenario, you know,
like as we use it in terms of like having
to eat our words and we've said something stupid. So
I don't know this this does this does hold up?
Like basically the bridge should not have given that gunback.
What do you think was gonna happen? Yeah, you're right.
(35:53):
That's a behavior that makes me think it is legend.
We know that. Uh. The exact origin, the real origin
of the idiom is largely unknown today, but if first
probably went in print somewhere in the eighteen fifties, and
it was also a story about a dim witted American dude.
(36:14):
So we have to eat our crow in that regard.
But nol, what an episode. I um, you know, I
feel bad for the crows at that time, but they
were being they were a threat to the lives of
these farmers, not just their livelihoods. And also, as we
talked about with our pal Andrew the Raven Howard just
(36:38):
before recording, there is this slippery slope people get into
when they say you shouldn't dine on intelligent animals, right,
because cows are intelligent, pigs are intelligent. Crows certainly are.
Crows certainly are Unfortunately for them, they're probably the least
delicious of the intelligent animals. Uh doubt people are gonna
(36:59):
stop eating cow and pig anytime soon. Um. Cephalopod is
another thing I don't I just I haven't finished it,
but I started watching that documentary My Octopus Teacher. Yeah,
it's so good. It's beautifully shot. It's a wonderful story
about this guy that just like you know, basically becomes
a sea creature. For lack of a better way of
(37:20):
describing it. Um, But when you see the playfulness of
these creatures and then how they can connect with this guy,
you'd probably be hard pressed to slice up mo tentacle
and dipping in soy sauce again. Yeah, yeah, which might
be which might be a story for another day. But
(37:42):
as he said, octopus also is delicious. UM as a
huge fan of UH. The intelligence of the octopus, I've
I've tried to remove them from my diet, which you
know is luckily for people like us living so far inland,
it's not too difficult for us to remove octopus from UH.
(38:04):
It would be a lot tougher to remove like chicken wings.
Because this is Atlanta, they're everywhere, all right. I don't
know about you know, I am getting a little bit hungry,
not quite famished. I think we fly like a crow
into our next episode. But how about this, folks, what's
the weirdest thing that you have eaten? What's the one
(38:28):
thing if you have one that you've always wanted to try?
And then, perhaps most directly, would you eat a crow? Why?
Or why not? Oh? Don't let other crow see you
eating a crow. They are intelligent enough to know what
is happening. They are also smart enough to remember your
face and teach their friends what you look like. They
(38:48):
will mess you up and come for you. They will
come for you. There's a study that proves it. They're
actually a couple of studies and anecdotes that prove it,
but thanks as always to our super producer Casey Pegram,
to our guest producer Andrew Howard, and you know what
always thinking I was in conversation about this earlier. We
need to give a much deserved shout out to our
(39:11):
graphic designer, Pam Peacock, who made our logo for the
show that respued and logo that's all. It is all Pam,
And we've got some surprises coming in the very near
future which involved Pam. Uh. I'm gonna leave it at that.
That's true. It's a you know, we're two guys who
(39:32):
are literally paid to read about weird stuff and then
talk for a living. So it is. It's been somewhat
difficult for us to keep some of these secrets. But
I think we're doing an okay job so far. I know,
but don't you love that? And when I say love,
I obviously mean hey when people on the internet are like, guys,
got some big stuff coming, can't talk about it yet,
(39:52):
but trust me, it's gonna pop off. Okay, it's gonna
be awesome. We didn't quite do it that egregiously, but
you know it what it is. But seriously, stay tuned.
Big stuff on the Horizon in the meantime, Huge thanks
to super producer Casey Pegrom to guest producer Andrew A.
How the Crow, the Raven, the Blackbird, Raven McKnight, Howard
(40:17):
the Third? Is he a third? He's baby? He might
as well be? And are I hope you're not alluding
to my tweet where I said I had a difficult
time with an episode of stuff. They don't want you
to know that I couldn't talk about It's okay, okay,
well yes, uh oh gosh, yeah that was a real
(40:38):
how was a real weird one that we just did
earlier this week? But yes, thanks of course to Alex
the Ephemist, Williams like e femorist like uh and big
thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat, big big thanks to Christopher
hassy Otis, both of whom shall be returning soon. And
(40:58):
let's have a big old coca for our number one raven,
Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. I don't want him
to be a raven. I like ravens too much. Let's
make him well. Crows are cool too, Magpie. What kind
of bird would he be if he was a bird?
I don't know, I don't know. For birds, Ben, you're
(41:20):
asking the wrong guy. Any any any bird that I
associated him in my mind would be an insult. So
about a cocket deal. I like a cockat deal. They've
got they've got a cool little plume, you know, on
their head dress. I could see that. I could see that,
and that feels like a compliment. For some reason, A
cocket deal does get his vibe. What are we talking about?
(41:42):
Tune into an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History to hear
for yourself. M hmm. We'll see you next time, Fox Yeah.
(42:07):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio KA.
(00:27):
Welcome to Ridiculous History. Thanks again as always for tuning in, folks.
Shout out to our super producer, Casey the Crow Pegrams.
Shout out to our guest producer Andrew the Raven Howard.
Uh they called me Ben, I I didn't think of
bird nicknames for the for us. That's that's as far
as I got. You know, I'm triggered by bird nicknames. Ben,
(00:49):
Thank you for for going giving me one. No, of course, Noll,
of course. This is Uh. This is an interesting episode
for both of us today because as you know, ride
or die nol is. You know you're you're not a
fan of birds for some I would say, some perfectly
valid reasons. Well, I mean it depends, you know. I
(01:10):
think it's possible that I have a manufactured, implanted memory
of being dive bomb attacked by seagulls at the beach
with my grandfather as a youth, But that may or
may not have actually happened. It might just be one
of the story I tell myself to explain my fear
of birds. I was talking about this with my girl
for the other night. I think I'm more afraid of
like land walking birds that can really come at you,
(01:31):
you know, with wobbly goose type necks, or like ostriches
and stuff, or shoe bill yeah, exactly, or like an
emu or god forbid, a castuary. You ever seen those monsters.
They can apparently disembowl you with a single claw, like
in the Jurassic Park the book. I didn't make it
to the movie, but yeah, there's kind of like weird dinosaurs.
And but I know that you're a fan of the corvids,
(01:52):
and we've talked about this multiple times on this and
other shows. Um, I think it's a dream of yours
to one day command an army of corvitte that can
do your bidding, but you would do stuff for them too,
would be like a quid pro quote type arrangement. Yeah. Yeah,
So I'm I'm fascinated by the study of what is
called non human intelligence, and corvids are brilliant. I just
(02:13):
want to hang out with them. I want to have
a Corvid crew, and I'd prefer ravens, but you know,
I will accept crows. Uh. The at the most extreme version.
It reminds me of the television adaptation of True Blood. Uh. Spoilers,
there's a weird subplot as this show declined in quality
(02:35):
about a vampire who has kind of created this relationship
with werewolves and it's a symbiotic relationship and maybe maybe
it would be something like that with crows. But today's
episode is about a guy named Dr. T. W. Stallings
who completely fundamentally disagrees with my, uh, with my opinion
(02:58):
of crows. No, this guy hated them. Well, I mean,
to be fair, Ben, You're not a farmer during the
Great Depression, so crows are not really wreck in your
shop the way they were, uh Dr T. W. Stallings
and many other folks who were desperately in need of
a bountiful harvest. Right. So, in the nineteen thirties, crows,
(03:21):
as in Western civilization in general outside of of Ben
for the most part, were viewed as disease vectors. You know,
often have bad reputations in terms of superstition, like black cats. Um,
sort of like this uh concept of the lore of
the of the crow as being some sort of familiar
(03:42):
to like the devil or like you know, witches or
were warlocks or whatever. But most importantly, they were crop stealers.
I think we all know about the scarecrow. That's a
thing probably was successful in varying degrees. You think they
would have gotten used to it them being so smart
and all right, then yeah, that's the thing. Part of
(04:03):
the reason that crows and ravens can be such pest
is because they are intelligent enough to think ahead and
to plan more efficient ways to steal things basically, And
so yeah, you're you're absolutely right, dude, to a crow
or raven. You know, any kind of corvid might be
(04:24):
scared off by a human like figure or effigy in
a field for a short amount of time, but once
they realize, hey, this thing looks like a person but
it doesn't move, then it's just another tree basically, then
they're all about it totally. And I think the most
recent appearance of corvid's in our podcast life was on
(04:46):
a Strange News episode of Stuff That I Want You
to Know, where we discussed a study that showed that
corvids actually have something called meta cognition, which is something
that humans have, which that's apart from their animals. Metic
cognition is quite literally thinking about thinking. So to your point,
then they can plan, they can observe, and they can
(05:08):
change their behavior accordingly, which is not not something to
sneeze at, you know, for a for a tiny what
what some people might malign as like bird brains or whatever.
You know, that is not a thing with these guys,
right right, And you know, honestly, they are exceptional in
the avian field, but they've used their powers for trickery
(05:28):
and to get over on humans. So it does make
sense that Dr. T. W. Stallings and many other people
in Oklahoma in the nineteen thirties, as he said, would
not care for these birds. It's already a very difficult
proposition to be a farmer, even if there is not
a crushing economic depression under way. So our episode today
(05:53):
concerns Dr. Stallings push throughout the state of Oklahoma to
get more of his fellow Oklahoma residents to start hunting
and eating crows. Yeah, and eventually Oklahoma's governor even got
in on the mix. He founded something called the State
(06:16):
House Crow Meat Lovers Association. And you know, Noel, you
and I both love uh talking about food. We're both
adventurous eaters. Um, we're gonna have to get to ah,
We're gonna have to get through some of the problems
with eating crow. I think I think we are. And
I gotta say, the crow meat Lover's pizza sounds like
(06:39):
the worst pizza ever of all time. Oh god, yeah,
unless it's spoiled meat and it's a pizza just for crows. Yeah,
maybe with also like milk curds sprinkled on top or something. Um,
you know. We gotta remember though, in addition to all
this crow hate, you know, literally just wanting to kill
them because they were screwing up people's crops. It was
(07:00):
the Great Depression and meat was scarce, so any meat
you could get would be considered like a premium kind
of like that. Even like, you know, typically people were
subsisting on things like you know, dry goods like beans
and pasta and and uh, you know, hominy for example,
like in the South, right, So meat would have been
like a special treat kind of even crow meat. So
(07:21):
we're gonna get again, We're gonna get into some of
the ways this was prepared. But let's just backtrack to
nineteen thirty six, when the residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma began
to kind of jump on board this crow eating bandwagon.
The butcher's. Local butchers would send their kids out into
the fields to kill and collect crow carcasses. They got
(07:45):
a dollar fifty. First I was reading this and I
was like, oh, a dollar fifty a crow, that seems reasonable. No,
it was a dollar fifty a dozen of crows, which
is uh yeah. And they would bring them back, chopped
their heads off, trust them up, and serve them, I imagine, however,
but again we're gonn give me some recipes later. And
this even became like remember how when like lobster was
like trash food, and like, like servants even petitioned the
(08:09):
government to force their masters not to serve them lobster
more than three times a week or something like that.
The crow was starting to occupy something of of a
you know, space like that, and that it was going
to be suggested as being like a staple food in
hospitals and just kind of like again like just the
go to meat of the era. Yeah. Yeah, And so
(08:31):
you can get a perspective on how these kids were
incentivized to hunt crows in batches of a dozen at
a time. Our inflation calculator tells us that one dollar
nine is equivalent to just a little bit over nineteen
dollars today, So there was some money for some kids there. Sure, yeah,
but you're right. People were embracing this idea on multiple
(08:54):
organizational levels. One science teacher in Oklahoma, Miss odd Firth,
even established a class exclusively about how to cook crows.
That's a that's a niche education right there. And uh
Dr T. W. Stallings himself not a farmer, He was
(09:16):
the county health superintendent, and like you said, he was
a vociferous, self proclaimed crow hater. He said that crows
were a serious problem for Oklahoma farmers, a problem that
had only gotten worse in the years leading up to
the mid nineties, and so he had this Bernese vibe
(09:37):
about him. The said, where Bernet's vibe? He said, all right,
we're gonna get the hearts and minds of our fellow
Oklahoma's focus on exterminating and eating crows so that we're
not just killing them for no reason. And we're gonna
do this, he said, in a lightbulb moment, through a
series of what I will call crow banquets. So we're
(09:57):
gonna trick people, We're gon because people love that, right,
So we're gonna we're gonna invite all these folks over.
We're gonna cook them a nice sumptuous meal, because it's
hard to turn down a hot meal in the depression.
And then after they've eaten their fill and they're talking
about how how good this was, this meal was, we're
(10:19):
going to tell them that they had, in fact dined
on crows and he had a recipe for it too.
It doesn't sound half bad, to be honest. I mean,
chrow meat is notorious for being dry and stringy. I've
heard it described as tasting kind of livery. But at
the same time, I like liver. I like liver and onions.
(10:39):
I wouldn't eat like liver prepared many other ways, but
if it's like fried and like you know, rolled in
a nice gravy, it can it can be pretty palatable
with you know, mushrooms and onion or something like that.
But they were doing something very similar with this. They
were coating, you know, plucking them, obviously coating them with lard,
which would you know, help keep them oyster, and then
(11:01):
cooking them in a sealed cast iron pan, likely kind
of a slow heat um so that it would kind
of stay as tender as possible, and you know, seasoned
and added celery and likely carrots and maybe some other
things like you might do with, you know, a roasted
chicken perhaps um, and then of course finishing all with
lots of gravy. Three crows to a person does a
(11:24):
meal make? And Stallings really was into this. He had
his reasons in terms of just like thinking about it
in terms of public health, I suppose, which is kind
of weird considering that you know, these crows were considered
diseased and vectors for disease and he was the head
of the health department. He was a big proponent for
(11:45):
people eating these. I wonder how they tested them to
make sure they weren't like contaminated or something that. Well,
that's another that's he's kind of if if crows in
Oklahoma in the nineties are smurfs, then this guy's Stallings
is definitely their artmel right. It's it's weird. They got
pressed for this too. In the nineteen thirties, The Pittsburgh
(12:07):
Post Gazette reported this enthusiasm for consuming crow in In
ninety six, Atlanta Constitution, which now exists as the Atlanta
Journal Constitution, reported how the then governor E. W. Marlin
and a group of state officials went to one of
these crow banquets and Marlin was so impressed. The story
(12:31):
goes that that caused him to establish this state house
Crow meat Lovers Association. And you know, crows are omnivorous
right in many ways their vacuum cleaners. If you end
up feeding a crow, all always be cautious about feeding
wild animals. Usually not a great idea. But if you
end up feeding and crow, the main thing you have
(12:53):
to look out for is not feeding them stuff that
has a lot of as salt. But if you end
up eating a crow, you're right, no, they they've got
a gamey taste. They can get grainy and stringy and tough,
but they're they're dark meat. So if you prepare them
correctly from what I understand, I haven't done this, they
can end up tasting a little bit like duck or goose,
(13:15):
which can be you know, pretty delectable. Uh huh. I
don't think I ever had a goose, but I can't.
I always think of that seat in the office where
it's a Christmas episode and Dwight finds a goose that's
been hit on the side of the road and brings
it into the office, you know, and he's supposedly gonna
trust it up and you know, clean it right there
and cook it for so he's like as a Christmas miracle,
(13:36):
and of course they make him take it outside. But duck,
I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it
is the darker of the dark meat. Like if if
you think dark meat, chicken taste gamy, duck is probably
gonna be extra that thing. But it's also fatty, which
bothers some people. But if you're into cooking, one thing
you can do with duck is cook it on our
(13:58):
rack and then under a rack, slice up some potatoes
and put them underneath the duck so the drippings dripped
down onto the potatoes. Then you get like duck fat
fried potatoes, which has a real rich flavor to it. Um.
Speaking of which, there were a lot of sacrifices that
had to be made in the Great Depression, like instead
of butter, they use drippings or fat. So probably having
(14:20):
fatty you know, dark meat was probably a good thing
because it made for more drippings they could then use
in place of butter. Right, yeah, yeah, there's a great
book that details this called Paradox of Plenty of Social
History of Eating in Modern America. This is the kind
of specific reference work that I love, just like the
Kolanski's book about salt oh Ben. I had to bring
(14:42):
up to some friends the other day. Uh, your fascination
with very specific books. And if I'm not mistaken, you
said you own a book exclusively on halibut cod God. Okay,
my bad, I thought, because halibit came up and I
was like, pretty sure my partner has a book exclusively
on haliban. It's uh, yeah, it's it's uh. I would,
by the way, I would totally buy and devour a
(15:05):
book about haliban, just for the Haliban, just for the Haliban.
So in this book by Harvey Levinstein, he talks about
the privation people face because, for a long long time,
and still to a degree here in the States, eating
is a social opportunity. It's when you see your friends,
it's when you spend quality time with your family. And
(15:28):
it was tough for people to adjust to having to
change this pattern. During the depression. Instead of three meals
a day, might have to like you said, no, people
went back to very affordable grains and carved staples, right
corn meal, pasta, beans, pancakes. The most common complaint people
(15:50):
had at this time was that they were they were
getting tired of eating, of eating the same stuff day
in day out. Meats, fruits, a lot of other delicate
sees like sweets pretty much disappeared due to either scarcity
or affordability at this point, Like there were riots in
small towns across the country where people were literally shouting,
(16:13):
we want food. We will not let our children starve. Yeah,
at least they weren't shouting, we want more variety, we
will not eat beans again, because that would be a
little I mean, at least they had something. No, it's true.
And the people that had the beans and the pasta,
and if they were lucky eggs, which really did take
(16:34):
the places of meat, you know, because meats were just
so hard to come by, they kind of had it good,
you know. But it was it was pretty widespread, and
of course they were you know, the swells in their
ivory towers that probably had more than the rest of us.
But yeah, in general, people were having to really subsist
and then kind of scraped to get by. Not to
(16:54):
mention that that's the that's the big thing about the
Great Depression, right it was. It was the perfect storm
of horrible, horrible things happening. One of which was uh,
it would have exacerbated the issue of the crows, you know,
attacking the crops. It was drought that already dried up
crops all over the South. Share croppers in Alabama they
referred to their diet as the three M diet, which
(17:16):
was salt, pork, was the M, meat, corn meal, and molasses.
Why the molasses. That dessert was that like the pudding
cup of the Great Depression. So there are things called breadlines.
I believe it's very similar to a soup kitchen ben
if I'm not mistaken. Like a breadline is like a
free handouts for for people in desperate situations or who
are homeless. Yeah, it's for people who found themselves houseless
(17:40):
or they were unable to find work. That was the majority.
The majority of people were unemployed and fighting to stay
in their homes or in their towns or with their relatives.
And so you would wait in the in these long
literal lines to get some sort of sustenance and it
would be usually some kind of bread, especially in the
(18:00):
North and and and like a lot of gangsters and
criminals like Paublo Escobar for example, made a name for
himself by giving food and clothes and things to less
fortunate people who lived around the area of Medine where
he did business. Al Capone ran a breadline, you know,
to kind of I think probably engender some positive feelings
(18:23):
among the people that he, like you know, was around
in his in his actual neighborhoods. Yeah, like the Yakuza
helping disaster stricken areas of Japan after earthquakes or other
natural disasters. Do you know they've also been involved in
organizing Halloween things. I jumped out, it's so weirdly adhering,
But maybe a story for another You know, it's interesting
(18:51):
because I have some roots in Appalachia and I can
confirm from accounts of ancestors some of the horror story.
But what occurred for those folks in in that time,
Like one strategy was that children would eat on alternate days.
I had a relative who would tell my parents about
(19:13):
times where they were convinced that they were going to starve,
only to have dug up an old frozen patch of
potatoes and eaten those potatoes that were frozen in the ground,
which gave them just enough sustenance to soldier on. But
you know, urban areas, rural areas alike, they were all
(19:35):
crushed by this. Ninety thousand businesses completely shut their doors,
fifty million people lose their jobs, get their wages cut
in half. If you read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck,
he's so exaggerating. Now, it's so good, and it's one
of the first books that I was like, oh, this
(19:55):
is a painting a picture, this is how it really was.
It just feels like you're there and yeah, I mean
spoiler alert, no, I'm not gonna do but at the
end there's something that's absolutely heartbreaking that a character has
to do to survive. Yeah. Yeah, that is a harrowing book.
And it's based on this period of time in a
realistic way. Twenty people that we know of committed suicide,
(20:18):
which means certainly more ten thousand banks collapsed. The effects
of the Great Depression remain in the modern day and
in a lot of ways. And that's that's the context
in which this idea of eating crow occurs. Like people
are going especially rural areas, people are saying, look, if
(20:39):
I don't have two nickels to rub together to go
to a deli, well then I'll just do what my
grandparents are great grandparents did and I'll just hunt game,
you know, the way like people in rural areas will
still hunt game for a reliable source of nutrition today. Absolutely, yeah,
and pro became an alternative, viable routine. There was not
(21:00):
one person in this area of Oklahoma said yeah, I'm
too good for it. Yeah, and it was you know,
it was it was a kind of two pronged thing
right where it was giving them some variation in their
diets or perhaps the only thing they had. You know,
that certainly could have been the case for many, But
it also was helping out the farmers and potentially staving
(21:22):
off that further loss of of of productivity to to
their to their crops. So you know, it seemed like
kind of helping out your neighbor in addition to like
getting a meal in you. But this was not just
an Oklahoma thing, by the way. It started to really spread,
Like you saw reports out of Kansas, Georgia, Washington State,
Illinois reporting this kind of surge in public interest in
(21:45):
eating these birds. In August of n approximately two Americans
per day wrote to the Department of Agriculture asking for
details on quote, how crows might be cooked, stewed, fried,
or roasted, and how crow broth can be made. Probably,
do you think that's the that's the question for the
(22:07):
Department of agg seems more like a good housekeeping kind
of letter, you know, or like an Emily Post situation. Well,
it was. It was a different time. You know, people
in general wrote letters were offted. But but I I
believe you are correct. They eventually probably had to put
an intern on that. The fact that crews were plentiful
(22:27):
in Oklahoma and many other parts of the country was
helpful to stallings cause crow hunting clubs started popping up
and there was sort of a a war maybe campaign
is a better word for public favor to this approach
of eating crew because in addition to having all these
(22:47):
heavy dark folkloric associations or connotations, crews are scavengers, and
so they were known to eat garbage, and so people thought, look,
if I'm eating a crow, am I kind of just
eating garbage with an extra step? Is that just like
eating trash with extra steps? And uh? Yes and no? Right,
(23:09):
I mean, well, catfish is good now, it's very true,
and so so I yeah, but I would also say
yes and no in that they're not clean, you know
what I mean? Like you really have to. But I
guess you would boil them, probably to get the feathers
to pop off, and then pluck them like you do.
So I suppose they're being like sanitized, but still just
(23:30):
the whole concept just really gives me the creeps. Yeah,
and you know, to be clear, I said, there was
no one in it Oklahoma at the time who automatically
said they were too good for it. But this was
not everybody's favorite new food, and there were a couple
of people outside of Oklahoma who are just like, forget this,
We'll we'll get to them. Uh. But opinions vary on
(23:52):
how this tasted for a lot of people as a
curiosity or a kind of a desperate measure, or was
a novelty. And like we said, they are gamy, they
are dark meat. So a lot of the recipes that
you see are similar to recipes that you can see
for other gamey, tasty meat. You have as much like
(24:15):
seasoning as possible in the mix to make it make
it go down a little bit smoother. Sure, I mean,
you know, like I love cooking with chicken thighs, but
it's gotta be really really well seasoned. Whereas a chicken breast.
You know, you could probably eat it, which is a
little salt and pepper and it tastes pretty good. And
then to me, the chicken thigh is the perfect level
(24:35):
of gamey. I love this too, by the way, But
I don't think we mentioned some folks. They were really
trying to up the idea of the crow. So there
were even people that referred to them as black partridges. Uh.
It's just just kind of like, you know, a crow
by any other name still tastes like crow. But there
was this chef at the hotel Sherman named from non
(24:58):
potrais pant that makes sense, punt Trough who it was,
is a very fancy hotel, and he had a dish
called crow on casserole. Uh. And if if I may,
I'm just gonna read a little bit of the recipe.
It sounds this sounds great. Actually, this recipe is specific
enough to cook it, I think. So he skinned and
(25:18):
dress like we said, put in a pan with butter,
add garlic, then a third cup of white wine, which
most people wouldn't have. They would not That's what I'm saying.
This is like total shabby chic kind of situation, right. Uh.
Strong veal gravy, which is already going to have a
little bit of a livery kind of game equality to it. Right,
(25:39):
Three tablespoons and then soybeans sauce. Does that mean soy sauce? Yes, yes,
I think that's what that means, poured over the crow meat.
And then the birds are cooked in a covered dish
for two hours. Again that low and slow. It's got
to be young birds. Take this goes to quote directly
from the recipe. Young birds taken in the spring required
just one hour, Chef punt Row said. And then of
(26:01):
course mushrooms, small cubes of fried salt pork, and small
glazed onions. Sounds pretty good. And people who tried this
fancy like elevated cuisine approach overwhelmingly liked it. People had said,
you know this surprisingly and I like it a little
(26:21):
bit better than wild duck. And it's tasty and it's
deliciously prepared. But as we said, some people, not in
Oklahoma but other places felt like they were already too
good for this, and they looked down their nose at it.
There was one chef in Atlanta ninety six who said,
roast crow bab b a h. People used to say
(26:44):
that bah bah, Yeah, where's the humbug? Folks just don't
go in for that kind of meat. So far as
I'm concerned, to eat and crow will continue to be
nothing but a political expression. It's interesting, that's a really
no no. I think we I think we've been sort
of alluding to this, uh, and that it was almost
(27:04):
like a patriotic act to kill the crows at least
because you were kind of helping your your neighbor, your
farming neighbors. But also it was kind of an act
of what's the word I'm looking for, like societal kind
of like it was sort of like an act of
bringing everyone together behind like a common enemy, right in
a time where people felt desperately out of control. There's
(27:25):
an account from um The Oklahoman from a woman named
Sue Simpson who cooked this meat for a husband, talking
about quote, feeling that it might be the patriotic thing
to do. I bought some and baked crow for dinner.
As I recall, there was not enough meat on the
bones to make it worthwhile. I do not remember how
it tasted, but I do know that I did try
to eat it. My husband said that he did not
(27:46):
mind eating crow. As in quotes. If he had done
something to apologize for but did not expect to see it,
served to dinner, and to please not do it again
right Like you know, it takes a lot to make
him marriage work. It was on his fee is in queues.
It's true. This was a trend that came about of desperation.
(28:06):
It had this patina of patriotism, and it was meant
as a way of combating loss of crops. But after
times became less desperate, this trend fizzled. There was one
person who didn't give up on it, and you can
guess who he is. Fellow ridiculous historians. Dr T. W.
Stalls himself. He was full gargamel, as they say in Gattica.
(28:30):
He saved nothing for the swim back. Uh. He was
as late as ninety seven he was finding every reporter
that would listen to him and extolling the virtues of
eating crows. I wonder if he had a situation where
he got like attacked by one or something as a kid.
And that's where we are today. If you go to
(28:50):
almost any restaurant in the US, it will be virtually
impossible to find a genuine like dish made of crow
it's even less common than turtle soup, which we talked
about in the past, which is, you know, mainly common
in New Orleans, Maryland and parts of DC. Now, yeah,
(29:11):
and then you'll, you know, you'll you'll go to some
fancy restaurants, so you'll see things like squab or other
like gamy weird small birds on the menu as kind
of a flex like, look look at how amazing our
cooking is that we can make this weird trash bird
tastes good. But I don't even know if like you know,
Heston Blumenthal would try messing with crow. Maybe our friend
(29:32):
Richard Blaze, maybe he might take a shot at it.
But but the but most you're right, most folks won't.
This has become kind of a closed chapter in the
history book. But it leaves us with another conversation that
we've talked about a little bit in the past. There
are so many somewhat arbitrary cultural taboos about what is
(29:57):
or is not fit to eat here in the u US,
in the West overall. And if there hadn't been the
Great Depression, crows would have been five people wouldn't have
been trying to eat them. And what is now referred
to as kind of the crow craze raises questions about
what makes us consider something edible or something disgusting, and
(30:20):
how culturally changeable or fluid these things might be like that,
like nutria is another example, or raccoons or I think
everybody's fine with eating alligators now right. It does seem
that way, But there's even a broader conversation than that.
And we've talked about this too. It's like the whole
socially acceptable lime for like, it's okay to eat rabbit
(30:44):
to some, but definitely not okay to eat cat. You know,
at least in the United States. Crow just seems like
it's nasty and probably not necessary and and really just
probably limited to an active desperation. There's a really gross
scene and always sunny in Philadelphia. You might remember it
and fight like a crow, Fight like a crow. But
(31:05):
he eats a crow and it's like tainted or something,
and he starts like getting violently ill Frank's character. You're Frank,
the Danny de Vito's character, and I think he almost
starts like hallucinating off of the rotten crow or the
tainted crow or something like that. But yeah, it definitely
does not seem like. I mean, I think even animals
(31:25):
would probably steer away from it if they could. It's
funny because the whole time we're researching this episode, I
just kept rewatching clips of the Fight Milk episode of
Always Stunny in Philadelphia with like crow eggs and some
kind of nutritional substance in a ton of like vodka.
I think it was disgusting. But what is that show
(31:48):
not given us? It hasn't given us something that we're
going to give you now, folks, this had to be
occurring to a lot of our fellow listeners today. Is
this the origin of the old saying to eat crow? Luckily,
(32:11):
according to our good friend Man Guess had a coutur,
co founder of Mental Floss and a guy who actually
hangs out with us, it's not true. It's also the
perfect time to wish him the absolute best in his
new venture. You were very sad to lose him at
the company as a colleague, but we will remain dear friends.
(32:31):
Been been with him for a long time and he's
a lovely guy. But yeah, he wrote this article himself
back when he was still a Mental Floss and he
traced the origin of the expression to eat crow somewhere
completely different. Yeah. Yeah, so when when you say to
eat crow, it kind of has this feeling of like
other expressions like oh he had egg on his face
(32:54):
or uh, oh they had to eat humble pie. De
crow means to humiliate onesell and there's a legend about
it that dates back to eighteen twelve. During a truce
in the War of eighteen twelve, Apparently a guy from
New England walked over to the British camp to do
some hunting and he got irritated because he's like, uh,
(33:16):
we're in the middle of a war. I can't find
any deer or rabbit or what have you. I'm just
gonna shoot the first thing I see. And the first
thing he saw was a crew and he shot it.
But a British guy, a British officer heard the gunshot right, Yes,
that's right, And the British officer gave the American props
on his marksmanship and then asked him to see the weapon,
(33:40):
to hold the weapon um with which he had he
had made this crack shot and uh being a bit
on the gullible side. Um. The American handed over the weapon,
after which, of course the British officer turned it on
him and yelled at him and basically humiliated him and
forced him to eat a bite of the crow that
(34:02):
he had just killed, uncooked feathers and all yeah. Uh.
And the guy tried to beg but you know what
could he do? The British dude had his guns, so
he ate a piece of the crow. The officer returned
his firearms, said okay, go home, get out of here,
away with you. Uh. And before the British guy could leave,
(34:27):
the new Englander was very angry, turned the gun on
the officer and made him eat the rest of the
burt also uncooked, also unplucked. Uh. The story concludes that
the British officer was furious. The next day he went
to the American camp and he demanded retribution and satisfaction.
The US commanding officers had the soldier brought to him
(34:49):
and they said, you know, have you seen this guy before,
this British dude. And the soldier was trying to lie
pro very cape, but he couldn't, so eventually he stuttered, yes, Captain,
I dined with him yesterday. And that's that's the joke.
They have heard other versions of this as a joke.
(35:11):
I heard one. It was pretty popular in the military
about this occurring in um, the Sahara or the Middle East,
but it was a much filthier version because it was
like the military version, it wasn't crow they were eating. Yeah,
I don't know. I love this account. This is a
great story. I still have to wonder if if it's
(35:32):
not a little in dispute as to whether it came
from this or the idea of like eating crow as
being sort of like the worst case scenario, you know,
like as we use it in terms of like having
to eat our words and we've said something stupid. So
I don't know this this does this does hold up?
Like basically the bridge should not have given that gunback.
What do you think was gonna happen? Yeah, you're right.
(35:53):
That's a behavior that makes me think it is legend.
We know that. Uh. The exact origin, the real origin
of the idiom is largely unknown today, but if first
probably went in print somewhere in the eighteen fifties, and
it was also a story about a dim witted American dude.
(36:14):
So we have to eat our crow in that regard.
But nol, what an episode. I um, you know, I
feel bad for the crows at that time, but they
were being they were a threat to the lives of
these farmers, not just their livelihoods. And also, as we
talked about with our pal Andrew the Raven Howard just
(36:38):
before recording, there is this slippery slope people get into
when they say you shouldn't dine on intelligent animals, right,
because cows are intelligent, pigs are intelligent. Crows certainly are.
Crows certainly are Unfortunately for them, they're probably the least
delicious of the intelligent animals. Uh doubt people are gonna
(36:59):
stop eating cow and pig anytime soon. Um. Cephalopod is
another thing I don't I just I haven't finished it,
but I started watching that documentary My Octopus Teacher. Yeah,
it's so good. It's beautifully shot. It's a wonderful story
about this guy that just like you know, basically becomes
a sea creature. For lack of a better way of
(37:20):
describing it. Um, But when you see the playfulness of
these creatures and then how they can connect with this guy,
you'd probably be hard pressed to slice up mo tentacle
and dipping in soy sauce again. Yeah, yeah, which might
be which might be a story for another day. But
(37:42):
as he said, octopus also is delicious. UM as a
huge fan of UH. The intelligence of the octopus, I've
I've tried to remove them from my diet, which you
know is luckily for people like us living so far inland,
it's not too difficult for us to remove octopus from UH.
(38:04):
It would be a lot tougher to remove like chicken wings.
Because this is Atlanta, they're everywhere, all right. I don't
know about you know, I am getting a little bit hungry,
not quite famished. I think we fly like a crow
into our next episode. But how about this, folks, what's
the weirdest thing that you have eaten? What's the one
(38:28):
thing if you have one that you've always wanted to try?
And then, perhaps most directly, would you eat a crow? Why?
Or why not? Oh? Don't let other crow see you
eating a crow. They are intelligent enough to know what
is happening. They are also smart enough to remember your
face and teach their friends what you look like. They
(38:48):
will mess you up and come for you. They will
come for you. There's a study that proves it. They're
actually a couple of studies and anecdotes that prove it,
but thanks as always to our super producer Casey Pegram,
to our guest producer Andrew Howard, and you know what
always thinking I was in conversation about this earlier. We
need to give a much deserved shout out to our
(39:11):
graphic designer, Pam Peacock, who made our logo for the
show that respued and logo that's all. It is all Pam,
And we've got some surprises coming in the very near
future which involved Pam. Uh. I'm gonna leave it at that.
That's true. It's a you know, we're two guys who
(39:32):
are literally paid to read about weird stuff and then
talk for a living. So it is. It's been somewhat
difficult for us to keep some of these secrets. But
I think we're doing an okay job so far. I know,
but don't you love that? And when I say love,
I obviously mean hey when people on the internet are like, guys,
got some big stuff coming, can't talk about it yet,
(39:52):
but trust me, it's gonna pop off. Okay, it's gonna
be awesome. We didn't quite do it that egregiously, but
you know it what it is. But seriously, stay tuned.
Big stuff on the Horizon in the meantime, Huge thanks
to super producer Casey Pegrom to guest producer Andrew A.
How the Crow, the Raven, the Blackbird, Raven McKnight, Howard
(40:17):
the Third? Is he a third? He's baby? He might
as well be? And are I hope you're not alluding
to my tweet where I said I had a difficult
time with an episode of stuff. They don't want you
to know that I couldn't talk about It's okay, okay,
well yes, uh oh gosh, yeah that was a real
(40:38):
how was a real weird one that we just did
earlier this week? But yes, thanks of course to Alex
the Ephemist, Williams like e femorist like uh and big
thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat, big big thanks to Christopher
hassy Otis, both of whom shall be returning soon. And
(40:58):
let's have a big old coca for our number one raven,
Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. I don't want him
to be a raven. I like ravens too much. Let's
make him well. Crows are cool too, Magpie. What kind
of bird would he be if he was a bird?
I don't know, I don't know. For birds, Ben, you're
(41:20):
asking the wrong guy. Any any any bird that I
associated him in my mind would be an insult. So
about a cocket deal. I like a cockat deal. They've
got they've got a cool little plume, you know, on
their head dress. I could see that. I could see that,
and that feels like a compliment. For some reason, A
cocket deal does get his vibe. What are we talking about?
(41:42):
Tune into an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History to hear
for yourself. M hmm. We'll see you next time, Fox Yeah.
(42:07):
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