Epitaph for Obie

I hadn't heard of Obie Prust's death until I read the Times this morning. I was surprised at the length of his obituary. There was nearly three quarters of a column of it. I hadn't realized that Obie had been so prominent a citizen. Of course he had been important on radio for years, and his television show was a fixture on the American scene when he died. I used to watch it now and again, not because I cared so much for Obie, but to marvel at the grace and speed with which so fat a man could move.

The Times was circumspect, but a couple of the other papers characterized Obie as "the greatest chef in America" and "this country's foremost authority on fine food." I suspect that's overdoing it. I don't question Obie's status; he was a fine cook and a notable gourmet and I imagine he did as much to try to wean Americans away from devotion to hamburgers-and-French-fries as anyone, but still, I wouldn't call him the greatest chef in America. What about Louis Havely? If it comes to that, what about Gustav Wackenhut?

Yes, I have dined at Obie's table, not as often as I was invited, perhaps, but often enough. The last time was only a few months ago, and I remember it very well. We had a pâté of wild boar with an ice-cold beach-plum sauce, an authentic consommé double, and a dish of chicken which Obie called poulet à la mode de Pouilly, although we were given to understand that it was original with him: chicken cooked in champagne and served in a sauce velouté that had the faintest suggestion of cinnamon about it. I can't say I cared for it. I think chicken should taste of chicken, and of nothing but chicken. I prefer Chinese cookery. The Chinese understand the preparation of fowl.

However, Obie's other guests were pleased. There were eight at table. I will admit to being happy with the dessert. I think Obie Prust's fame as a creator of desserts was deserved; I suspect his flair in that direction was one of the reasons for the immense popularity of his television program in a country devoted to the conspicuous consumption of sugar. Every time I saw a fat woman on the street I used to mark her as one of Obie's devotees. At any rate, he gave us poached Bartlett pears on a bed of vanilla ice cream, with eau de vie de poire poured over, and a touch of unsweetened whipped cream. It was very good indeed.

Did you ever watch the man on television? Then you may recall that at the end of each program he disclosed the cost per plate of the specimen meal he had prepared. Over coffee that night a featherheaded young lady asked Obie what the poulet à la mode de Pouilly had cost. I could see that Obie was glad she had brought the matter up, and I suspected that if she had not, he would have done so himself. His little blue (continued on page 99)Epitaph for Obie(continued from page 41) pinpoint eyes stared out of that incredibly fat, round face, framed by its festooned drapery of jowl, and he said, "I should think about nineteen cents per serving." One or two of the women twittered at the absurdity of serving eight people with chicken for something like a dollar and a half, and Obie laughed quietly. Others laughed when he did. Obie was widely held to be the very personification of the jolly fat man.

"I think nineteen cents would about cover it," he said.

"But it couldn't, Obie," one of the women said.

"Ah, but it could, and it does," he said. "Let me tell you about it." He poured Armagnac into his coffee and stirred it thoughtfully.

"I was driving from Denton this afternoon," he said, "and going too fast, I suspect, because I had just run over a big dog, when I saw a cluster of people and cars ahead of me on the highway, just beyond the place where seventy-three turns off, you know the gaggle of people standing and cars on and off the road that means there's been an accident. I hadn't intended to stop, but when I got close I could see that it had been a most unusually amusing accident. A huge tractor-and-trailer outfit had turned over. And I mean huge. And what had it been carrying? Crated chickens, my dears, crated chickens. About three thousand of them, I should guess, white leghorns. Fully two thirds of them were loose. They were squawking their heads off. They were running back and forth across the road, stopping to scratch in the barren dust on the shoulder, squawking, squawking. Of course, they had good reason to be running, because there must have been twenty or thirty people chasing them. I assure you it was very funny. Whole families were in red-eyed pursuit of these chickens: Mommy, Daddy, and the wet-nosed young, all screaming and whooping. Every once in a while one of them would actually catch a chicken, despite the stupidity with which they went about it. The children were falling down, skinning their knees and ripping their clothes. It was very amusing to see.

"After a while I noticed one man who seemed to be taking no part in the festivities. He was a tall, thin specimen of thirty-five or so, his clothes were seedy and soiled and he was standing near the trailer which was lying on its side. He was staring, rather than looking around. I rather suspected him of being the driver of the truck, and I went over and asked him.

"Indeed he had been the driver. I spoke to him softly, because I could see he was on the edge of hysteria. What had happened? I asked him. He told me. It was a true comedy of errors. He owned the truck, you see. And he had owned another, but the bank had repossessed it. Business was very bad. Finally he had got the chance to buy this load of leghorns on consignment, so to speak. He had bought them in Holborn, for delivery in Danbury, a run of about 800 miles. It had taken just about his last dollar to close the deal. He couldn't afford to hire a second driver, and he couldn't stop to rest, so he had gone to sleep at the wheel, and here he was, an hour's drive from Danbury, with two thirds of his cargo loose and rapidly being grabbed up by the ever-growing numbers of kindly passers-by, and most of the rest dead in their crates, or in what was left of their crates.

"I attempted to console this idiot, so clearly one of those nulls whose lives are small disasters run together like beads on a string. I suggested that after all there was the insurance. But no. For the first time in his life he had run a cargo without insurance. He hadn't had the money. I shrugged my shoulders. I remember thinking what a pity he hadn't been killed in the crash, he was so obviously ill-suited for life. But apparently he had misinterpreted my early interest as heartfelt sympathy and he wanted to reciprocate.

" 'Take a couple of chickens,' he said. 'Go ahead, everybody else is.'

" 'That's very good of you,' I said, 'but I think not.'

"I suspect the stupid man thought I couldn't move quickly enough to catch a chicken for myself, because he persisted, and finally grabbed a couple of them for me. I was piqued, and by way of showing him how it was done, I scooped up two more. I thanked him, I flung the poultry into the trunk of my car, and came along home. And that, my dears, is why your dinner cost me nineteen cents."

"Didn't the butcher charge you anything for killing them, and plucking and drawing them?" the girl asked.

"My dear," Obie said, "I am not a bride. I attend to those trifles myself. Besides, I must say that the chickens were already half-dead when I took them out of the trunk. This has been a warm day, you know. As a matter of fact, their being at the point of suffocation reminded me of the excellent results medieval cooks used to get by roasting fowl alive. So I merely plucked them, wired them, feet, wings and neck, and roasted them gently to death with a good deal of butter-basting."

I should think the silence lasted for all of a minute. Then the young lady spoke again.

"These chickens tonight?" she said. "The ones we ate, you cooked alive?"

"Not altogether," Obie said jovially. "I just roasted them to death. Then I cut them up and put them to stew in the champagne."

"But how could you?" the girl said. "How could you?"

Obie laughed. "You are very naive, child," he said. "And inconsistent, which is worse. You don't object to boiling a lobster to death? What about the trout, when someone wants him bleu? And the oyster! How many millions of oysters do you suppose we eat on the half shell every year, from tiny Olympias to big fat lynnhavens, and every one eaten alive?"

One of the men spoke up.

"It's not the same thing, Obie," he said. "You can't compare an oyster with a chicken. Lower form of life, and all."

"Nothing of the kind," Obie said. "The oyster happens to be mute, that's all. If oysters could squawk like chickens, if they could scream out as they were being impaled on the fork and chewed up, I dare say only those few of us who really do appreciate the good things of the table would eat them."

"I hadn't known it was a medieval custom to cook alive," I said.

"Oh, yes," Obie said, "and not just fowl. And in the case of some of the bigger animals, slaughter was slow and painful. Hogs, for instance, were commonly beaten to death, and a long, hard job it must have been, too. But it was worth it: the intense pain and excitement caused a great flow of adrenaline and other vital juices which flavored the meat and made it tender. All of you must have noticed tonight that the chicken we had was exquisitely tender."

As I remember, no one answered.

I happened to see Obie on television a couple of days later. He was talking about the dinner, describing it, telling his audience how to prepare it.

"This poulet à la mode de Pouilly is what those of you who have been with me for a time know I call a reserve dish," he said. "That means that I'm holding out, in this case, one little detail, one step in the preparation of the dish. Don't worry, your own poulet à la mode de Pouilly will be perfectly delicious. It will be almost as good as mine. And some day, perhaps, I'll tell you the missing step. It's very simple. But it will surprise you, my dears, indeed it will!"

I don't expect to miss Obie very much. As I said earlier, I read his obituaries with some little pleasure. The Times was rather vague about the cause of his death. An accidental fall, the story said. The Mirror was more specific. It seems that Obie slipped in the shower, turned the mixer on full-hot as he fell, and broke an ankle. That was the police theory, at any rate: unable to move, he had been scalded to death. I would be curious to know how long it took. I suppose the time for that sort of thing would have to be reckoned by weight, and Obie was probably every ounce of three hundred pounds.