Most children learned of Squanto, the Wampanoag native who blessed
the starving settlers, gave lessons on growing corn(put a dead fish with each seed),
which saved so many those first sparse years.
Most children never heard of Quadequine, who first put fire to that delicacy,
called it popped, parched or rice corn, shared with his new Pilgrim friends.
The amity disappeared. Standish, Bradford, Winslow, enjoyed that fare
while roasting their neighbors and stealing their land.
Postlude to Thanksgiving, prelude to genocide, over centuries. Natives killed
by the pop, pop, pop of guns that slew the buffalo, massacred the Nations.
Popcorn, the only snack Depression people could afford,
a snack for the down and out. Now 17 billion quarts a year
feasted on by mouths of poor and privileged alike.
Doubt Quadequine drizzled butter and salt all over the corn?
But later the offspring of those settlers chose to slather it,
exploding their own fat hearts, one bad habit in our obese history.
Originally published in Everscribe Magazine