Eating Cats

I just ate a dish of corned beef hash and fried eggs. Slathered in ketchup. I'm not supposed to consume much sodium, or cholesterol. Or alcohol, or sunshine. I have high blood pressure and skin cancer, but both are under control, so the literary world can breathe a sigh of relief. I plan to annoy people for many years to come, especially my doctors, some of whom I've already outlived. I can survive on pure stubbornness for the foreseeable future.
  As I was enjoying my banquet, hot off the cast iron pan, and lubricated with cold beer, I wondered what this so-called "hash" really was. The producers say it consists of beef, rehydrated potatoes, sugar, and enough salt in various forms to dry up Lake Michigan. In today's world, in a "developed" country, one must have faith that what they tell you is true. In the old days, I would have made the hash myself, with my own butchered beef, home-grown potatoes, and salt bought or stolen from wherever people used to get salt. Today, it's far less complicated. You just have to have faith in your food, like you have to have faith in the dollar. Atheists laugh at people who have faith in God, in Jesus, in Muhammad, Krishna, and all the countless other objects of their devotions. Yet those same people have faith in our monetary system. They have faith that, when they drive seventy miles an hour on the highway, their vehicle won't fail miserably, fall apart, and result in a horrific jumble of metal and plastic that is the final punctuation mark of their lives. They believe in hash, and that their car won't turn them into it.
 Years ago, I was lucky enough to travel in Italy for a few weeks. My wife speaks Italian, and strikes up a conversation with anyone who stops to listen. We were on a train, traveling across endless barren lands, between glorious cities. A friendly young woman spoke casually to us, advising us on the best places to see in her country. We were hippies, my wife in a pony tail and beads, me with a half-grown beard and bell-bottom jeans. She studied us with obvious, but not rude, curiosity. One of the bits of advice she gave us was, "If you visit Torino, when you order steak, make sure it's a big piece. Small pieces of meat may be cat." We didn't go to Torino, but the advice stuck with me all these years.
 I don't know why, but that lovely hash I just enjoyed reminded me of that long train ride during that hot, dry summer afternoon in Italy, listening with rapt attention, breathing the arid air that came all the way from Ethiopia. Americans call Torino "Turin", for some reason. Anyway, if you go, avoid the chipped beef.