Yes, I was a funny little kid, and as I’ve said so often, I was always hungry.

Whenever we read something in school that had anything to do with food, I paid special attention.

I remember this one time. We were reading about early life on the plains, the fur trappers coming in from the northeast to try life on the prairie, to catch and kill and skin and tan buffalo hides which they could sell back east for a lot of money, the freight trains on the rails just put down to cross the continent. The fur trappers were cowboys now, and they sat around the campfire and talked about food, because it was always scarce and they were always hungry, just like me.

But after the buffalo hunt there were a lot of dead buffalos lying around after they had been skinned. So they put more wood on the campfire, don’t ask me where they got it, and they put big chunks of buffalo on skewers that I guess they carried around with them just in case, and they roasted the meat you could smell for miles away that made you want to come over and sit a spell and share the meat.

They got to talking. They talked about the buffalo steaks, if I remember, and the hump. The hump they all agreed, and if they didn’t already know about it they learned real quick, the hump was the best part of the buffalo, juicy and sweet with lots of fat that explained why the hump was so high up which was mostly fat but you could eat it for days, and one pioneer cowboy bragged how he had eaten forty pounds in one sitting, and he became my idol and hero and role model.

I wanted to eat buffalo. Especially the hump, because I had learned the secrets by reading about it, how it was the best part, fat and sweet.

I looked in all the stores whenever we went shopping.

I couldn’t find it. I asked my Mother about it and she just laughed.

I looked all over the neighborhood to see if there were any stray buffaloes lurking around. I looked in all the bushes.

Then I heard conflicting messages on the news. One said that buffalos were protected and you couldn’t eat them because they were like the National Bird which was the Eagle and you couldn’t eat that either because for the same reason, it was protected.

Then somebody announced that buffalos were breeding like crazy because they were so protected, and they were having so many baby buffalos that they were eating all the grass and so it was now ok to shoot some to thin the herd and you could finally eat some now available in stores for a limited time. So I hung around the meat counter in the store and kept asking the butcher until he finally said, “Beat it kid! You’re botherin me!”

So I never did get to eat buffalo, especially not the hump, which is the best part, fat and juicy. I knew what I was missing in my life.

I’m still waiting, because I know the secrets because I read about it in a book at school. I’m waiting for the best part, the hump, fat and sweet and juicy.