Friday, February 24, 2006
Draft #66
As youngsters, my brother and I were forced to do a lot of things that we didn't necessarily enjoy doing. Most of these activities were in the field of manual labor while others were just plain boring. My father has a very strict "There's a time for work, and there's a time for play" policy which naturally rubbed against the fibers of my "well if we're gunna waste the afternoon working, we might as well have fun doing it" policy. I submit to you the following:
Killing chickens at uncle Jerry's farm
This activity was done on an annual basis for about a three year stretch, and I hated every second of it. Killing chickens took an entire day to complete from start to finish, and I spent most of it trying to dodge the messy parts. A typical day would start out with the men at the chicken coop. Haus (my brother) and I would be in charge of retriving the chickens from the coop and bringing them to the bloody wooden stump just outside of the entrance. From there, we would give the chicken to uncle Jerry who would place the chicken's head gently on the stump where my father was waiting with bloody ax in hand. And with one foul swoop, off with it's head. I'll have to admit, that I really didn't mind this part of the job because for a grade schooler, nothing could be more exciting than chasing a headless chicken through a field. Those guys really bounced about for good long while until they finally stopped twitching and succumbed to their eventual death. With Haus and I working the retrieval to and from the stump, and the men manning the head removal process, we were a finely tuned, well oiled machine that moved with the precision of drunken three-legged mule with a bad case of mad cow.I'm pretty sure I was the wrench clogging up the whole engine. I was a sissy pants that felt more comfortable in the confines of an air-conditioned basement playing Nintendo than I was in the grime and grit of the country. I was probably pussy-footin it every step of the way, holding the chicken by the legs like it was a dirty diaper, walking extra slow as to not anger the massive fowl. Sometimes the assembly line would be moving a little to quick for Haus and I, and we would lose a chicken or two in the high grasses of the field. Then my dad would get upset and ask us how the hell we could lose an entire chicken. To which my response would be, "They're moving pretty quick dad." I can still remember the image of the chickens hopping up and down with blood squirting from the top of their neck, wings flapping wildly with the groan of the next victim in the background.
Once all the chickens were gathered and thrown into the miniature brass tubs, it was off to the basement of the farm house, the underbelly, the dungeon, the boiler room, where it was time to boil, defeather, and gut the chickens. We were met there by my sister and mother and this was the part I detesting the most. Haus and I weren't involved with the boiling process to help loosen up the feathers, but we were given the opportunity to pluck feathers, or reach in through the undercarriage and rip out all the guts, gizzards, intestines, and whatever else smelled like complete shit. I can still recall the horrid stench of that basement and how I wished I could be anywhere else on the planet. I refused to partake in the gut removal especially when gloves weren't being used, so I settled on feather plucking which is up there in the category of things that are great, right next to watching paint dry and moving a piano up nine flights of stairs. I would repeatedly take breaks to go outside and hit rocks with an old wooden baseball bat to help regain my composure, but they kept sucking me back in.
Once the chickens were boiled, plucked, and gutted, it was time to cut these bad boys up so they could be put in ziplock bags to be stored in a freezer in our garage for years at a time because the chicken tasted like crap. Nobody really liked this chicken, maybe because we had all the images burned into our brains, or because the original skin was still on it, or maybe mom just didn't have the right eleven herbs and spices to bring this bird to life, but the chicken was bad and that was some bad chicken man, mess you up! Now while I hated most every second of the experience, I can look back on it now and be thankful that I had the chance to give country life a try. You really appreciate what all has to happen to get your Roundy's frozen chicken breast ready for it's soon to be Foreman style grilling. Thank God for agriculture.
# posted by hucklebuck @ 7:19 AM 
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ah, you brought me back to my childhood with that story. Did you ever have to "pick rocks"? That job was much worse than Butchering Chickens, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Haus, do you remember wearing your gray, members only jacket? For some reason I can picture you with that jacket running throught the field. If not, it was still a sweet jacket.
Or......you could just grow another sweet beard and take your shirt off in the middle of a game and let the sweat beeds rolling down your white chest reflect a light so bright that it will blind everyone in attendance! Just another option for drawing attention to yourself.
Well, one of two things could happen. A) you could be boo-ed mercilessly and urged to put your shirt back on because you are in a section full of people who are quick to dry heave. Or... B) You will receive many cat calls from surrounding drunk women and will be propositioned for a night of errotica from a woman named Ulga. Could go either way, if I was you, I'd roll that dye.
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