I’m Fixing To Have My Last Meal

I’m fixing to have my last meal.

I’ve often imagined what I would have if the occasion really was the last meal you would ever have the opportunity to enjoy, you know, like if you were on death row and they were going to fry you at midnight if the governor didn’t call. One thing the media always reports is what the condemned had as his last meal.

I don’t know when the tradition of serving anything they wanted began, but I think it might be a modern one, or it might not even exist and just be something some director invented to make a movie more of a tear jerker.

Come to think of it I don’t remember reading anything about in the olden days of a last meal being served before they guillotined, hung or shot someone as a means of execution.

I suppose what a person requests on that last night depends on their nationality, tastes, circumstances, and a lot of other variables.

Perhaps during the French Revolution a Count or some other titled person would have possibly requested crepes and brie as their last meal, but I doubt it.

From what I read in The Tale of Two Cities, when their time came they were just dragged from their dank prison cells and had their royal heads chopped off simply for being born as who they were.

Maybe during the old west a horse thief was granted his wish for some bacon and beans before they strung him up, but I never heard of that either.
They just found a good tree and hung them.

And I don’t remember ever reading about any barbeques before a firing squad commenced either, except by the people on the good side of the firing squad.

So my conclusion is that this last meal of whatever the condemned desires is a modern day bleeding heart thing where we serve up prime rib and ice cream to horrible criminals as a way of making us feel better before we kill them, giving them one last taste of the good life which they never respected or treasured.

As well as a conclusion, I also have a solution—that we don’t give them a last meal and in fact don’t even kill them, but rather condemn them to be incarcerated for life on a constant diet of fried baloney and gravy, three meals a day, on and on until such time as their demise.

I’m fixing to have my last meal and all I’m guilty of is being hungry. I’m not a French nobleman or even a horse thief, but I’m having fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, butter beans, fried okra, and candied yams with corn bread and ice tea.

And I know it’s my last meal because my wife said she wasn’t fixing to be cooking anymore this weekend.