My grandmother cooked rutabagas with bacon and butter every time I visited for lunch, and they tasted great. I loved my grandmother. She was the nicest lady in the entire world. She died of leukemia, but lived a long life, and everyone she knew loved her just as I did. In fact, people loved her too much, and she had to hide from some people. That is one of the problems when you are too lovable. You have to hide from the non-lovables. She did the best she could. I remember she used to tell me to keep my voice down when I was in her apartment, lest her neighbors hear me and come a-knocking on the door wanting to visit.

I wrote to a world-famous author the other day to ask whether he liked rutabagas. He was only lukewarm on the rutabaga controversy. I'm a rutabaga partisan and was offended. At least he said he eats rutabaga. He demonstrated he does know how to pronounce the word, so that is progess at least. Authors. All they care about is words and grammar and pronunciation. What about the turnip? I think that secretly he detests rutabaga, and is just being polite on the off-chance I might be a fan, but in reality, I have not read any of his books in over thirty years. He did not need to reply to me at all as I am just a time-waster, not a paying customer, but I did not tell him that. I do remember back in the day I used to read him, but then I got tired of him, because all his books seemed the same. Then I bought another book of his second-hand on E-bay and I hated it and threw it in the trash can. This is the sort of thing I did not tell him in my email. Instead, I just discussed the rutabaga.

I like rutabaga.