Chicken and
Sausage Gumbo is lagniappe for the soul in my family. Just last week I got my
Le Creuset 9.5 quart pot out and assembled my ingredients on the counter for this Cajun
delight. I know it sounds lazy, but I always use a couple of
rotisserie chickens because it makes life in the kitchen easier. I like easy. Mr. Leblanc
usually takes over with the deboning of the chicken, but he was not home. I attempted to dismember the rotisserie
chicken. First, I pulled off the legs,
then the wings which gave me pause for a shiver. I stepped back, took a deep
breath and in what seemed like ten seconds I recalled a disturbing sequence of
events from my somewhat redneck childhood deep in the heart of Louisiana.
One cold
rainy evening back in February 1952, my daddy got a call from the Baton Rouge
Post Master just at closing time. A mail order of five hundred little biddies
had not been claimed and the Post Master wanted to know if Daddy would take the
chicks. It was going to be a cold night and the Post Master wanted assurance
those little biddies were safe and warm for the night and the rest of their
lives. Have you ever seen one of those Farmer’s Almanac ads that read: 500 biddies for
$19.95? Daddy had a contract with the Post Office to transport the mail four
times a day in one of the Army surplus trucks that he bought after the War and
the crew at the Post Office knew that he was always looking for a money-making opportunity.
Mr. Mac. as Daddy
was affectionately called, quickly seized the opportunity. With childlike
excitement, he told mama and my sisters and me that taking on the biddies would
be a family project. Supplies were needed for the new fledglings, like coops,
feeding trays and warmers. The five o’clock whistle had already blown for the
day and Baton Rouge’s streets were rolled up tight as jelly rolls. Neither of
the town’s two feed stores were open. Not easily discouraged, Daddy said we
would have to make do for the night. He had a plan. “If Daddy can’t do it,
nobody can,” was his mantra.
Our garage
became the neo-natal nursery for five hundred of these screeching little
biddies who wanted their mamas. We divided the little yellow balls of fluff
into four large cardboard boxes that we scavenged from a couple of grocery
store alleys on our way home. Each box was lined with newspaper and held one pie
tin filled with cornmeal and another filled with water. We strung a spider web
of extension cords across the boxes with one lone light bulb dangling down into
each box to provide some warmth in our below freezing garage. By the time the
biddies were bedded down for the night, the garage was beginning to smell. Some
of the biddies were screeching loudly. Daddy plugged in an old radio and turned
it on hoping to quiet them. He could not quell the smell, so he softly closed the
door.
As Daddy
kissed each of our foreheads good night, I could see a smile on his lips. He
knew he had hit pay dirt with those little biddies. Five hundred fresh country
eggs a day would almost make us rich. I could see Mama’s eyes rolling back in
her head like she had doubts about this latest venture. Mr. Mac was a force to
be reckoned with, a legend in his own time.
At first
light, Daddy entered the cold and smelly garage. His smile turned upside down
as he found half of the biddies frozen to death, legs in the air or face down
in the pie pans of water. Dead either way. Equipped with shovels and little
wooden crosses, we three children buried the still-frozen biddies in a
mass grave. After a short prayer, the family moved on with plans for the two
hundred fifty remaining future layers. Daddy built a chicken yard, outfitted
with all the needed chicken equipment and fed them laying mash religiously for the next three
months.
This would
probably be a good time to disclose that several hundred pounds of laying mash
later, we discovered that all two hundred fifty of our future laying hens were
roosters. Those little fluffy yellow baby chicks had turned into the meanest
white roosters on earth. After we all
left home each morning for school and work, I guess those cold-hearted roosters
got bored because they commenced pecking each other until their white feathers
were splotched with blood. It was a scene right out of Deliverance. Someone
told my Daddy that if he daubed black Shinola shoe polish on the bloody feathers
each day that the chickens would stop trying to peck each other to death. Sweet
Jesus, I thought, come get me now. I wanted no part of that operation.
Daddy was
eager to get the Shinola show on the road. Rushing home each afternoon, he
would coral us all into the chicken yard and designate who would catch the
chickens-on-the-run by their legs and who would be the polish dauber. Two of us
were instructed to catch three sets of feet in each hand. I cried and pleaded
that I didn’t want to touch them. I was not cut out to be a farm girl. Daddy
said I was being foolish and I should quit acting like a baby. (I was the
oldest) I don’t know how I didn’t die from holding my breath during the whole Operation- Shinola when it was my turn to wrap my short fat fingers around
those crusty, yellow chicken legs. Every third day I was the dauber which was
no easy task with their wings flapping every which-a-way as they tried to peck me
with their beaks. After a few weeks of these farm yard tactics, the chickens
began to heal. Life almost returned to normal. Homework never looked so good.
The chickens
were fat and clucking when slaughter day approached. We watched in horror as a
crusty old whip-of-a-woman with a blue rag tied around her head and matching
apron showed up at our house and made no apologies as she rang each and every
chicken’s neck. “Come here, you little “SOB,” she’d yell. Then grabbing each
chicken by the neck she’d start cranking. Chicken heads flew into one pile and
their still-flopping bodies were tossed into another. The last chicken to go gave
her a run for her money. No part of the process was orderly. Laissez-fair of the 50’s. I had to go lie down inside by the fan. Upset as I
was, I was still ecstatic to be free from the chickens. Maybe the Circus would be in town tomorrow.
However evil on my part as it sounds, I realized the
chickens were not leaving our neck of the woods. They were cleaned and cut in
half, then fourths. The back section consisting of a leg and second joint (thigh) was
neatly wrapped in white paper and marked and stacked in our freezer in the same
garage where the travesty had begun. Those daayum chickens had come full
circle. The two hundred fifty that didn’t freeze that first night were frozen
now. The breasts were sold to a local grocer, so the whole disgusting undertaking
was not a total loss. And, we did have lots of Bar B Qs. None for me, thank
you. Mercy, I hated those chickens dead or alive
and felt a sense of deliverance about a year later when the last leg was eaten.
Do I like
chicken today? Do I eat chicken today? Yes, for
some sick reason, but breasts only. Let me just say that I do not allow
anything in my freezer that has legs or wings. That rule puts my husband in a
bind, being the game hunter he is. But, I am the only Chick in this house and I
rule the roost.
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