PICKLED HERRING
                    (C)1991 Alan M. Schwartz

Were you to venture forth in search of piscine victuals, visiting 
your friendly neighborhood seafood restaurant to luxuriate in the 
oral enchantment attendant to a fine fish dinner, I posit that 
the word "herring" would never enter your mind, or stomach.  The 
herring is not renowned for its delicious flavor, its subtle 
texture, its satisfying appearance, the bravery or skill of its 
fishermen, or anything else that would recommend it as a casual 
food.  The herring is amazingly abundant and, given the choice 
between it and annual winter starvation, Northern Europeans 
proved to be remarkably inventive in exploring the myriad taste 
adventures possible - not that it made the stuff any easier to 
force through your mouth or any less likely to catapult out of 
your stomach as your alimentary canal recoiled in horror.

My forebears bore forth from the Pale of Settlement, Lithuania 
and Rumania, shortening their last names with a vengeance and 
dropping their ethnic identities like steaming road apples, 
desirous only of coming to America and taking over.  Their 
outward demeanor could be mistaken for any other lower class scum 
with enough intelligence to instinctively relocate north of the 
Mason-Dixon line.  Their private culinary passions retained their 
Old World origins, rife with gustatory repugnance.  Thus it is 
that I in my maturity, my grandparents' grandson, sit here before 
a rather sophisticated microcomputer, typing away and munching on 
pickled herring, while the cat gags.

Pickled herring is the raw fish (already a dubious proposition) 
scaled, gutted, beheaded, betailed, filleted, but not skinned, 
dumped into a mixture of vinegar, pickling spices, and coarsely 
chopped raw onions, and let mature for a suitable number of 
weeks.  The nutrients of barley could be preserved as beer, grape 
juice delightedly stores as wine, and cabbage gained indefinite 
longetivity as sauerkraut, the forever vegetable.  The folks back 
in the old country were on a roll, and tried it with fish, hoping 
to stockpile protein.  The color of pickled herring is the dull 
grey white of very old, never bleached cotton underwear.  The 
smell of pickled herring combines the best, or at least the 
strongest, intimations of raw fish, vinegar, and raw onions.  The 
texture is that of sodden, crumbling leather.  The flavor of 
pickled herring is repulsive, hideous and dreadful, and 
marvelous.  I sit here and my mouth waters, jets of saliva 
fountaining down my teeth.  The cat is going after a hairball, 
his flanks rhythmically caving in as he extends his neck and 
makes awful gurgling coughs.

Babies will nonchalantly drink bleach or eat their own feces, 
indifferent to smells and tastes adults find ghastly.  It is at 
this moment of life that the thoughtful ethnic parent scoops a 
spoonful of chopped pickled herring into the toddler's mouth.  In 
the manner of the oral polio vaccine, early and repeated 
introduction of pickled herring into the mouth of baby triggers a 
whirlwind of biochemical permutations, altering cerebral 
microstructure, and forever addicting that hapless tot through 
adulthood and until death to the appalling siren song of raw fish 
and onions in vinegar.  I have been reshaped by evil ancestors.  
My weakness is not my responsibility, but my ecstasy is mine 
alone.  I am going to take another mouthful, even as the cat 
slinks away with his tail lowered.

I once worked for a Swedish corporation's American subsidiary.  I 
was delighted that the contents of a small glass jar that could 
clear the entire company cafeteria merely served to attract my 
employers.  With the steely glint of Viking berserkers in their 
eyes, they in turn unwrapped some lutefisk.  They laughed and 
sung, patted me on the back as one of their own, and we all 
munched a morsel.  It was now my turn to slide down the vortex of 
incipient nausea.  My internal organs shifted to Full Emergency 
Reverse as the stuff passed my teeth, and I bolted from the 
table.  Lutefisk is a genuine test of manhood.

Lutefisk is sun-dried codfish buried for months during the 
Scandinavian winter.  It is disinterred, reduced to convenient 
aliquots with a hand saw, boiled in lye to make it vulnerable to 
the insubstantial trespasses of human teeth, cooked again until 
achieving translucency according to the passions of the 
household, and served with bread, butter, and denials of 
responsibility.  Lutefisk training must surely begin in utero, 
because Codfish a la Drano cannot be any diploid organism's idea 
of a good time.  It sure as hell wasn't mine.

The progenitors of my progenitors were culinarily bounded to the 
north by lutefisk and to the south by twice-rotted milk (bleu 
cheese).  I am satisfied that they took the middle road with the 
acidic agony and ecstasy of pickled herring.