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In Poland, they drink Zubrówka, vodka flavored with bison grass. They know all about slaughter there. The European bison is a wisent. In Poland, they drink Zubrówka with apple juice, call it a Tatanka. Both wisent and bison descend from the same High German. As a child, my first two words were “apple juice.” My mother told me this. She is a Rose, not a Smith. When her father became old, he had to sell the orchard in Yakima, Washington. He saw things “over there” in Europe and never was the same, even fifty years on. I still wear Grandpa Rose’s hat: Strand Apple, it reads on the front. In each bottle of Zubrówka, you will find one solitary blade of bison grass. In Eastern Washington, the biggest tribe is the Yakama, not Yakima. The American Plains Buffalo (scientific name: bison bison bison) remembers little of slaughter there. Tatanka is the first name of Tatanka Iyotake, otherwise known as Chief Sitting Bull. But this man was Lakota Sioux, and bears no relation to mixed drinks, grandfathers’ hats, or anything else we hide ourselves in.
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During the War, while Grandpa Rose, the man of apples, the hats of apples, went to Europe with the Army Medics never to be the same, Grandfather Smith served with the Balloon Barrage Unit at a gyroscope factory in Long Island. During training, he shot his rifle only once, bruising his jaw. He buried the four remaining bullets in the ground. On kitchen patrol, he quartered Brussels sprouts and washed the same plate all day long, just to look busy. And later, at a base in Santa Fe, he found mimeograph work for my grandmother June, thanks to the unsung talents of Urselia Lopez. And while June’s health declined, sixty years later, he drove her Jaguar to Yuma with Gene, a former Navy man with tattoos of chickens on his toes, all to buy a dachshund no one really wanted. He told us these stories over dinner, the night before June’s funeral. To be honest, it was hard to say if you were even there or not.