h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

it seemed like a good thing at the time. A source of ready water, right at hand. Trouble is, there was a drought year when the spring dried up, so my sister had to have a deeper well dug.

My ancestors had 'spring houses', but wouldn't have advised living in them.

A lot of our ancestors made do with things that we don't have to.

A lot of them worked in the fields from morning until night, and when they wore out, that was it for them.

They also often had advantages we don't have. It doesn't only work one way.

This is true.

I hope, though, that not losing all your teeth by age forty, or lacking vaccines and antibiotics were not "advantages." I would like to keep those, if you don't mind.

Our ancestors didn't always have to settle for chicken or beef or pork to eat if they were far for the nearest sea or pond. This assumes, of course, that they were not so poor that protein choices were limited to nonexistent. (I imagine the scene in "Blazing Saddles" where the cowboys are sitting around eating beans -- and, yes, this being a Mel Brooks production, they are farting.)

Not that I'm knocking chicken and beef and pork, but people often ate whatever they shot in the woods. Those lines about eating possum in "Beverly Hillbillies were likely not pure fiction. Nowadays, some people shoot deer in season. My brother-in-law shot one once, and my mother made it into mincemeat.

but people ate beaver, snake, and many other things that no longer get looked at as food sources should they venture into our yards. Woodchuck and rabbit head the list.

My mother had a saying when people said they wouldn't eat something. She'd say, 'It's good...if you cook it right.'

She had eaten possum. She was from Mississippi. My father, who was from Tennessee, said you'd have to be starving to eat that.

My mother said, 'It's good...if you cook it right.'