you could learn a lot from starvation; i did

I learned some excellent lessons back in 1980 which have made a big difference in my decision-making ability, and even though i have made a lot of terrible decisions in the intervening years, there are still a few lessons i have not forgotten, and doubt i ever will…

The winter of 1980 was a bad year of coyote trapping and i decided to take back my old job at Jacob’s industries in early April. While packing for the trip i decided the pennies i still owned were not going to give me any meaningful buying power and i dumped them out in the yard before i left my home in the coulees of Saskatchewan.

Arriving in Whitehorse in early April, and with a truck payment shortly due on my nearly new Ford F150 full-time 4 wheel drive, i began working full shifts, on my feet with next to nothing to eat for a couple of weeks. I’d had a horse fall on me that winter and one of my knees has never been the same. The other one was acting up too for reasons i no longer recall. Try limping on both legs sometime and you will get the picture. The happiest time in my life it was not. And what i remember the best about it was limping my way the several blocks to the grocery store with my $3.65 in loose change and working my way through the huge grocery store, well-stocked with all the culinary delights available in Whitehorse in 1980, considering buying catfood, but deciding instead on a loaf of bread and paying for it with the loose change i had left in this world, counting out nickels, dimes and quarters while the people behind me waited patiently in line.

And if you do not think this public humiliation, coupled with the several days ahead, working physically on an empty stomach, had any effect on my future decision-making, you do not know me all that well i suppose, because i have never looked at money or food in quite the same way ever since! I clean my plate and sop up the gravy, and food has to be in quite an ugly state before it hits my composting pile. And i stare in literal shock and awe at the plates, 3/4 full of food, which people normally leave sitting there unloved and uneaten, on the restaurant table.

None of the above history lesson, however, is the reason for the writing of this article.

What i learned through this difficult time, was the value of carbohydrates, and though i had heard the term many many times, mostly in tedious classes in school and on health posters, i never knew what they were until it dawned on this foggy brain that they are simply foods based on seeds. Now, as mouanda, (most of us are no doubt aware), one really quick way to shed a few tons of ugly fat, other than cutting off your head, (an unpleasant business to be sure) is to leave the carbs and the sugars behind and go for a protein-rich diet instead. Well, it turns out the opposite is also true, and during another rough spot in my life more recently, i discovered that a jar of peanuts will let me work hard physically for about three days. They really are amazingly powerful sources of energy, as are rice, flour, and all the rest of the happy family of carbohydrates. And why is this so? Well it turns out the seed contains everything needed for the entire plant to grow to fruition, so basically you are consuming a large field of wheat when you eat that extra doughnut fritter thingy.

And as the months roll by and the trucking industry grinds possibly to a halt and the farmers stay inside to avoid getting the covids, this little tidbit of information may possibly help someone through the long cold and dark months of the winter to come.

And if things happen to turn around and everything turns up roses, now you know how to avoid becoming a whale in the good times. Aaayaw (and as always, you are welcome)