You've Gotta Spend Some Time with Amy and A Fried Chicken Dinner Long Ago

 On Fridays I get a link to Tim Challies' blog post A La Carte. In these regular Friday posts, Tim lists several blogs that he enjoys for the rest of us to enjoy also. One blog he listed yesterday was Amy's Humble Musings.

I've heard of this blog before and even logged onto it, but yesterday was different. Yesterday I really connected with Amy for the first time when I read her post entitled How I Saved the Day, and Lost it, at the Same Time.

Now you may not appreciate this hilariously weird post. But I identified with it, having 8 chickens (Amy's post is about a calf) currently living in my backyard and having dealt with "pasty butt" when they were just wee ones and other such fun things since, and also having spent part of my childhood on a farm. (At this point I must warn you about what is detailed in the very next parenthesis in the very next paragraph. Though it was originally meant to be just a few sentences at best, it has taken on a life all its own as if it were a blog post in and of itself. Besides being longer than I ever intended, it is also somewhat nauseatingly gross in detail - farmyard blood-and-guts sort of thing. If you can live with that, read the following story of what a three-year-old girl [me] experienced on the farm. [Yes, you're right, I said that to hook you and draw you in.] Then read Amy's post - a like-kind of article for "dessert").

Here's the next parenthesis I warned you about: (The farm when I was three-years-old - that's where I saw my mom, live chicken in hand, instruct my older sister, Kate, to hold the chicken's head and body - one part in each of her two little 5 year-old hands - on the chopping block so that she [mom] could whack its [the chicken's] head off. Now Kate didn't particularly like this idea and it was with many objections and great consternation that she held the squawking frenzied bird down. Not an easy task for an also hysterical five-year old. But that was life on the farm - oh so romantic. Mom then drew the axe over her head and swung it down where it descended upon the tree stump where the chicken's neck was neatly stationed. With my sis not being fully committed to the dead-chicken project, it is amazing that its head was actually parted quite perfectly from its body. [Of course, looking back we're all very thankful that mom's aim was so dead-on, especially Kate, and that it happened just the way it did.] Kate, however in shock and horror, at that moment, let go of the bird rather than continuing to hold it down till it was 100% dead. Complete pandemonium ensued as the half-dead [really 3/4-dead] chicken rallied off the stump and into the barnyard at top speed, mangled feathers flapping in the breeze, blood spurting there also. I won't mention it was the proverbial chicken-running-around-with-its head-cut-off scene.  It was quite a sight - a memory which my then three-year old brain has retained to this day. Now if you know me, you know my brain doesn't retain much of anything and never has. I've had a type of Alzheimer's (probably All-Timers) all my life and long ago adopted the Scarecrow's song - If I Only Had a Brain - as my song. For the Scarecrow's memory [and my computer's] there was and is hope. Not so with me. So for me to remember something that happened when I was three is nothing short of a miracle. Must have been pretty gruesome.)

Needless to say what we had for supper that evening. But enough barnyard blood and guts from me. Go read Amy's story.