Rutabagas. What are they?
That is a question I have been pondering for some time now, and I believe the residents of Moose County deserve an answer. A rutabaga is a root vegetable. It grows in the ground. It is somewhat round. These are facts.
My moustache began tingling the moment I saw a bin of them at Toodle’s Market, which told me there was a column in this somewhere. I trust my moustache. It has never steered me wrong, unlike certain individuals in Pickax who shall remain nameless but who know what they did and should be ashamed.
Are rutabagas nutritious? Probably. Do people enjoy them? Some claim to. I personally find them adequate when prepared by someone else at no cost to me. Mrs. Cobb used to prepare them beautifully before her unfortunate and violent death, which, statistically speaking, was not unusual for someone in my social circle. Pickax has lost many fine cooks to arson, poisoning, and blunt force trauma. One learns not to dwell.
Koko, I should note, refused to even sniff the rutabaga I placed before him last Tuesday. He turned his back, flicked his tail exactly twice, and knocked a book off the shelf — a copy of Dostoevsky’s *The Brothers Karamazov*. Coincidence? I think not. Yum Yum, meanwhile, sat on my chest at 4 a.m. and stared into my soul, which I believe was her way of communicating something profound about tubers.
Some might wonder why the Klingenschoen Fund recently allocated $40,000 for a Rutabaga Heritage Study. I would remind those people that agricultural education is a legitimate charitable expense and my accountant agrees completely. Besides, the squirrels outside the apple barn have been stealing from my bird feeders at an alarming rate, and no one investigates *that* misappropriation of resources. Why is that?
In closing, I would encourage all Moose County residents to consider the humble rutabaga. Buy one. Hold it. Ask yourself what it means to you. Then put it down, because dinner is not going to write itself, and neither, frankly, is this column.
Rutabagas.
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