The Best Chicken I Ever Tasted
My mother’s father was a tobacco farmer. Although he had died by the time I was born (heart attack at 49, mainly due to high fat diet and lots of Lucky Strikes) some of the farming lifestyle was still in place. The raising of livestock including chickens was a common practice in that agrarian economy.
We grew up next to my grandmother’s place and some of the old outbuildings including a chicken house were still standing. During those times, Easter gifts often included a baby chick or two whose fluffy feathers had been dyed blue, pink or some other hideous color. My sister and I thought they were so cute and cuddly. If you’ve ever been around poultry, however, you come to realize that these creatures are just feathered tubes – what goes in one end, quickly exits the other. The cute and cuddly honeymoon fades after about a month when the little creatures tranform into regular, full feathered chickens better suited to outdoor living.
While we ate the eggs they produced, our chickens were primarily raised as pets and were not destined for the plate. To further solidify the sanctity of their long term existence, they were even given names. As any livestock owner will tell you, once you name the animal, they’re pretty much taken off death row and given a sentence of life without parole. I was to learn, however, that while my sister and I knew each of our flock by name, not everyone did! This did not bode well for several of our pets.
Unless their lives are prematurely terminated in the interest of feeding humans, chickens generally live longer than one year. Our flock was thus increased at Easter time with successive introductions of new brightly colored chicks. After some years we had a dozen or so chickens and even a duck or two but that’s a story for another post. While these chickens had individual names, it was some times difficult to keep them straight as they all truly looked alike. Couple this fact with an increasing flock population and you have a situation which didn’t bode well for several members of the flock.
Fast forward to the family sitting down to a wonderful dinner of fried chicken. Although fried chicken was a staple meal back then, I do remember remarking about the taste and quality of this particular offering. Of course, my mother and father began to chuckle a bit and it wasn’t long before my sister and I deduced that our flock had been thinned a bit (Sarah, our part-time housekeeper apparently knew her way around the chicken pen and “prepared” the birds) .
At least my folks were kind enough not to mention any names.
Brooke
