Barbecue Streetsboro style

Barbecue Streetsboro style

fiction
edward w pritchard

The early settlers of Streetsboro thought of course they were logically responding to the situation at hand but were really carrying on a running four million year old battle.

By 1810 the Seneca Indians were gone from Streetsboro Ohio and Titus Street and his friends and family wanted to develop the area into the next Philadelphia. There was good land to be developed, acquired as part of the Western Reserve; and money, big money to be made. The Yankees, transported here from Connecticut, were savvy, hard working and ambitious. From two hours before sun-up to the time they dropped into bed for the day from exhaustion they worked and planned and prepared to survive and prosper.

A little girl had been killed by animals. Maybe wolves or a bear, or maybe something smaller, the record is unclear. The incident happened at dark and the next morning at 5:30 AM most of the men of the area and their sons over age 9 were out there, waiting.

During the previous night, after the men heard the news from their wives and women folk about the little girls death; many had had the same ancient dream. They dreamed of a clan member dead in a tree and a large type tiger confidently guarding the body. It was an archetypal memory and since most of us are descended from the same few strong, lucky descendants; most of the settlers of Streetsboro possessed the same racial memory of that body slumped across a tree branch and us helplessly below watching that tiger.

The men stood about twenty five feet apart with their rifles ready and began to walk inward toward the middle of a mile by mile by mile by mile square. The square now is the cross roads of busy downtown Streetsboro, but then it was still part wild, woody and there were lots and lots of animals in that square, in near the small town. Animals who made their living as scavengers or sometimes carnivores. Each man in the line, if he had sons brought them along and the older ones, more than 9 or 10 or 11 also had a rifle and did a man's work. The younger boys down to five years old were between their Father's in line and their older brothers and carried machete style swords or farm tools and their job was to hack at any small animal, to small to shoot or that tried to escape the entrapment.

As each boy with a machete got busy as the trap squeezed in on itself they naturally didn't have time to kill all the terrified screaming animals ferociously attempting to escape and the young boys, without instruction, began to merely hack at the legs of the fleeing animals. They would come back later to finish their assigned tasks.

The men and older boys marched carefully and shot economically. Despite the emotion of the early morning activities order and discipline maintained itself. Everyone knew what to do without thinking or instruction or reminder. No-one thought about what they were doing but each sensed exactly how to act and proceed. As a group they were the modern representatives of our planet's, the earth's, most successful group of hunters ever evolved to date and they proceeded accordingly. There was no judgment, second thoughts or morality to what they did, only expediency.

Later after the carnage the men and women worked together to prepare the barbecue, and those wounded or hurt in the hunt were groomed by those who hadn't taken place in the activities but were still an integral part of the group. Because of the huge number of animals killed there was no need to follow the ancient pecking orders of who ate first. Everyone could leisurely choose to eat as they preferred and all ate heartily.
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