Monday, Mar. 24, 1997
PRIDE OF THE PUDGY
By CALVIN TRILLIN
When the Coalition for Excess Weight Risk Education announced recently that Kansas City, Missouri, my hometown, was the fourth most obese city in the U.S., I received some congratulatory telephone calls that I suspect were not entirely sincere.
"You must be very proud," I was told by an acquaintance I'll call Ariel, who grew up in San Francisco. My father would have described Ariel as weighing "65 lbs. soaking wet--with her galoshes on." In Kansas City she wouldn't be wide enough to be noticed. I am aware that Ariel probably doesn't think that having the fourth-highest percentage of overweight residents (after New Orleans; Norfolk, Virginia; and San Antonio, Texas) is something to boast about. I am aware that she would not understand the pride I heard in the voice of Arthur Bryant, the legendary Kansas City barbecue man, many years ago when he told me his method of preparing French fries: "I get fresh potatoes and I cook them in pure lard. If you want to do a job, you do a job." Still, the best way to deal with people like Ariel is to play along.
I do think Kansas City has failed to take enough pride in being a mecca for American culinary delicacies that do not happen to be delicate. The city council has never even responded to the suggestion I made years ago, for instance, that one of the Missouri River bridges be named in memory of Chicken Betty Lucas, a virtuoso of the cast-iron skillet.
"National recognition is always gratifying," I said to Ariel. "And 'Fourth Fattest' does have a nice ring, whether or not they decide to put it on the city-limits signs. Don't worry: I'm sure San Francisco will do better next year than 26th."
That was a lie. I don't think that at all. San Francisco is always going to finish out of the money. I would agree with the general manager of Gates Bar-B-Q, in my hometown, who was quoted in the Kansas City Star as saying that a lot of people on the coast are skinny because they've developed an interest in eating "roots and bark."
Recently, I was in an ice-cream parlor in San Francisco that served the sort of fresh-fruit drinks sometimes called smoothies, and I noticed that the add-ins you could get in your smoothie (most of them for an extra 50[cents]), were listed as follows: "spirulina, bee pollen, brewer's yeast, calcium, ginseng, lecithin, protein powder mix, vitamins & minerals, and wheat germ." In Kansas City, people would pay a lot more than 50[cents] to have any of those things removed from whatever they were eating and replaced with Betty Lucas' chicken batter.
"I suppose you read that item in the Washington Post about the study indicating that patriotism varies in direct proportion to fatness," I said to Ariel, although I knew perfectly well that Ariel is too busy weighing out portions of roots and bark on her kitchen scale to read the Washington Post.
I told her about the two social scientists in Virginia, Carl Bowman and James Davison Hunter, who asked American men whether they would fight in a war for this country under any circumstances, and found that 4 1/2 times as many fat ones as skinny ones said yes.
"You must be very proud," Ariel said again.
"Yes," I said, "but it also must make you feel good to know that the few people from San Francisco who did fight for their country would look very trim in their uniforms." Two can play at this insincerity game.