Chicken, along with vegetables and fruits rich in antioxidants, make up a diet that may prevent Alzheimer’s, wife Beverly relayed the other night, breaking my concentration on a piece about Scotland Yard.
We both were into investigations.
With the mention of chicken, I took a mental journey into yesteryear.
I grew up where we had room for a huge garden, a pen that often held several dozen chickens — some of exotic extraction — and enough lawn to keep me busy behind an old reel-type mower.
The chickens were my responsibility.
The hen house — it still stands — had a roost, and if you ever kept chickens, you know what that meant. Every day or so I’d scatter lime under where the chickens perched.
Why? Glad you asked. Chickens poop a lot and the lime dries their excrement and suppresses odor.
Once a week I was dispatched with a blunt-ended trowel and bucket to clean up the you-know-what. Each bucketful was deposited on the garden and scattered with a rake. As good as what’s found in barnyards, Granddad advised.
Feeding, including a mash that made eggshells stronger, was another of my chores, along with keeping their water troughs full.
The only task that irked me was plucking feathers from weeds along the fence that kept the flock contained.
Dad was a stickler for neatness. So much a friend of his came to the door one day and said, “Ed! I thought you were dead. There’s a couple of weeds in your ditch.”
While I didn’t like gathering the feathers, there was an upside. Old enough to drive, I knew if I kept true with my chores there was a good chance I could have the family car for a Saturday night date.
A TALE too good to overlook:
One Saturday night a couple of buddies and I decided it would be a hoot to drive to Kansas City. By then I knew how to unscrew the cord to the odometer, which I did. On the way back we stopped in Iola, filled the car with gas — probably cost all of $3 — and reactivated the odometer. Dad, as far as I know, never was the wiser.
