I am 73 and will soon be 74 with no idea how I got this old. Sometimes when I wake up I have to stop and think, where did the years go? I go to the bathroom and see a grey-headed old man looking back at me. I have some friends with dementia and I know that I am not immune. So I thought I would recount some of my memories. I have told my kids that life is a journey. Along that journey, you run across obstacles in your path. You can turn back and try another path or you can face the obstacles and figure how to overcome them by going over, under, around or through them. You are competing with other people for your quality of life. I have always chosen to attack the obstacles and move forward. I haven't always made the best choice but early on, I realized that since life is a journey of obstacles, I hand to learn how to be tough. My motto has always been: Never Give Up. My second motto is: Whatever is Necessary. So, while I still can remember, I want to share some of my memories with my family.
The Many-Legged Chicken
I was born a young child as some of you know from some of my previous stories. My Mama and Daddy had a total of 13 children a combination of the good, the bad and the ugly (not me). At any one time, there were at least 8 or 9 around the supper table. Just because we were poor, we did not want for food. We raised a garden and fields of corn. We canned the food from the garden. We ate grapes growing along the creek bed. We picked berries of every variety, We hunted squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, deer and we either raised a hog for winter meat or helped Uncle Robert to slaughter several Russian Hogs each fall and he shared with us. We fished in the creek by our house and the French Broad River. My Mama always had a pot of pinto beans on the wood stove and in the overhead of the stove, she kept a stash of biscuits and cornbread. We walked the road banks and picked Polk salad that Mama cooked with scrambled eggs from our chickens. Well, the chickens did not scramble the eggs, we did. We had a milk cow. We used a milk churn to make our own butter and buttermilk. We raised corn and converted it to 100 proof whiskey (moonshine). So, We didn't know we were poor. We felt fortunate to have what we had. We had a cold mountain stream coming close to the house and we kept out milk in what we called the spout branch. The cold water kept the milk cold and provided us with the best drinking water that I have ever tasted. We had an outhouse down the hill from our house and a flashlight for those trips after dark. We had a wood heater in the living room and we cut firewood from the well-treed 8 acres that my Daddy owned. Life was a series of daily chores with a break once in a while for a picnic of Chicken and Mama's homemade potato salad and a gallon of Kool-aid. Mama made grape and berry jellies and jams. We would buy peaches from roadside stands that were trucked up from Georgia and Mama would can the peaches and my Grandma would make peach preserves (the best). We had a bank house off the side of the house to store canned goods and a side of bacon. We walked along the gravel roads in the County and gathered whiskey bottles. My mama would wash and disinfect the bottles and fill them with moonshine for sale. A half-pint cost 75 cents and a pint cost $2.00 up until the Cuban Crisis and we had to raise the price because sugar was scarce and costs a lot more than normal. We worked on some of the big farms stringing wire for green beans to grow and when they grew, we went back and picked them by the bushel for 50 cents a bushel. Our clothes had patches but every year we got a couple of new outfits for the school year. In the summertime, we went barefoot and that saved on shoe costs. When Mama went to the store, she picked up salt, pepper, flour and not much more. I often think of those times and I wish that I could relive those moments. Eventually, our life got more modern with electricity, a refrigerator and a small black and white TV. We kept the kerosene lamps for power outages.
Anyway to get back to the many leged Chicken. We did not always have meat with our meals but sometimes we would have chicken along with pinto beans and collard greens. Since the chicken gizzard was reserved for my Daddy and the chicken legs were reserved for the younger kids, I usually ended up with a thigh or a wing. As the older kids left home, I longed for the time when I would get a chicken leg. One day, when there were only four of us kids left at home, I knew that I would finally get a chicken leg. I was anxious. Mama fried up some chicken and passed the pieces around. The two youngest kids got legs. I asked Mama, where are the other legs? She said, "Son, a chicken only has two legs." I was in disbelief because many times I had seen 4 legs passed around. I got up from the supper table and went out onto the back porch and looked at the chickens walking around on two legs. What a puzzle. Mama explained. When more kids were at home, she cooked two chickens. I will never forget that day when I realized that Chickens only have two legs.
More vivid memories to come. Stay tuned.
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