Sonovagun Stew A Folklore Miscellany Edited by Edward Francis Abernethy

"We skinned our squirrels and quartered them and tossed them in the pot. The stock was already boiling and squirrel parts were cooking tender. Somebody had tossed in some young cat squirrels, heads and tails, and they periodically rolled to the surface to see what was coming next. A young coon and a rabbit were added to the pot, and some uncle threatened the stew with an armadillo that was snuffling around in the brush just outside the firelight."

Chow time for West Texas cowboys consists of a traditional food: sonovagun stew. As editor Francis Edward Abernethy explains in his preface, this chuckwagon stew "uses every part of a fat calf except his hide, horns, and hooves." The traditional meal is repeated throughout the United States, although called by different names: The Louisiana jambalaya, the Alaska mulligan, the hobo slumgullion. The common denominator of each is the use of whatever is edible and handy.

Sonovagun Stew, the 46th volume of the Texas Folklore Society's annual publications, is a traditional Texas literary sonovagun. Abernethy notes that "the cook has put into it whatever was savory and on hand—everything but the horns, the hide, and the hooves." Cowboy ballads, bateaus, gaucho songs, mineral wells, corridos, Aggie war stories, songs of Bob Wills, Baptist kids, coyotes, and old-time cowboys are all simmered together and spiced with discussions of folklore, heaven, neighborhood gatherings, cotton growing, and family characters. The result is a savory literary-gastronomical delight.

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Sonovagun Stew
+ ISBN 1-57441-105-5. paper $14.95s

LC 85-14290. 6X9. Folklore #41. 184 pp. Illus. Index.

Publication Date: 2000.

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This title may be obtained through your local bookseller, who will place special orders for them through Ingram Book Company's on-demand division.