Read Online My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki - Free Book Online Page B

shoot was the bonehead Oda, back for his second round.
    “Takagi, don’t be stupid,” he told me. “The program is not called My Mexican Wife!, you know....” I had given up trying to sell him on the idea.
    But then the oddest thing happened. We had been filming in Oklahoma, the “Sooner State,” just across the border in a town at the tip of the Panhandle. Oda had this great idea that the entire meal should be cooked in frying pans with handles, and our wife, a Mrs. Klinck, agreed. She made German Fried Potatoes and Succotash and Griddle Biscuits, and her meat was a delicate Sooner Schnitzel, made with thin cutlets of veal, dredged in crushed Kellogg’s Krispies and paprika, then pan-fried in drippings with sautéed onions and sour cream. Mrs. Klinck insisted we try a cutlet or two, and to my surprise, Oda dug in with gusto. He had a fondness for German food, it seemed, but after the first few bites, he dropped his fork and clutched his neck as though he were choking.
    “Oda-san! Dame da yo! Stop it immediately!” I hissed at him, furious that he should make such cruel fun of Mrs. Klinck’s cooking. I mean, she was sitting at the table, facing us and watching to see how we liked her Schnitzel.
    But he didn’t stop. Instead, the strangling noises he was making intensified, and as Mrs. Klinck watched him, her eyes grew wide and round. She stood up, knocking her chair over, and ran from the room.
    “Call nine-one-one!” I heard her cry, and that’s when I realized something else was happening.
    Oda’s entire body had suddenly grown rigid and was starting to swell. Within minutes his windpipe had closed, and by the time the local paramedics arrived he could barely breathe. They gave him a shot of adrenaline and we airlifted him in a crop duster to the nearest hospital.
    “Anaphylactic shock,” the emergency room doctor said. “What was he eating when it started?”
    I described the menu in detail.
    The doctor shrugged. “Sounds a bit heavy,” he said, “but basically okay.”
    After the seizure had passed and I was helping Oda fill out the medical history forms, he answered yes to the question about antibiotic allergies. When the doctor saw this, he nodded.
    “That’s it,” he said grimly. He was a young man just out of medical school and had come to Oklahoma from San Francisco. He was cute and really tall, so we’d been flirting a little.
    “What’s it?” I asked.
    “Antibiotics,” he said. He looked at me. “You’re a city girl. You’ve probably never been to a feedlot, have you.”
    “What, you mean for cows?”
    He rolled his eyes. “No, cattle. Meat.”
    “No, but it’s funny you should bring it up. What do feedlots have to do with anaphylactic shock?”
    “Well, if you’d been to one, you’d know what I was talking about. They’re filthy and overcrowded—breeding grounds for all sorts of disease—so cattle are given antibiotics as a preventive measure, which builds up and collects in the meat.”
    “But this was veal....”
    He looked at me. “Are you kidding? Especially in veal. Whew! Those calves live in boxes and never learn to walk, even—and the farmers keep them alive with these massive doses of drugs just long enough to kill them. What sent your director into shock was the residue of the antibiotics in the Sooner Schnitzel.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Nope. What’s his name ... Oda? He must be the sensitive type.”
    “Oh, please ...” If he only knew.
    The young doctor’s smile faded. “You know, it scares me. I mean, allergies are one thing. But all these surplus antibiotics are raising people’s tolerances, and it won’t be long before the stuff just doesn’t work anymore. There’s all sorts of virulent bacteria that are already resistant.... It’s like back to the future—we’re headed backward in time, toward a pre-antibiotic age.”
    I remembered this conversation much later on, but at the moment all I could think was damage control. I phoned Kato