2001
| February 17, 2001 I had forgotten my past. It has receded in time. My childhood too distant to affect my life. No memories pounce out on a daily basis to remind me of who I thought I would be. Or to nag me about where I thought I would be going. I was preparing eggs for my younger son since protein is essential for energy and muscle growth. I want him in rehab. I want him walking. One egg had a spot. This is not usual in these days of caged-grown chickens Force fed as they are on souped-up grains, the process is mechanized to oblivion. It struck a chord. An egg spot is not a bad thing. You simply scoop the spot up with a spoon and toss it. It is small. It is usually in the thinner part of the egg white. They exist because a chicken is an egg-laying engine. Its insides are a pipeline of egg production. When drawn (the process of pulling out its guts after killing it), the eggs come out in a descending series. The hard shall that would have been tomorrow morning's lay. The soft shell right behind it. Perhaps another just barely shelled. And then various sizes, in descending order of sizes, of yokes. A spot is developed by the shell forming around just a tad more than it should have. When I was raising chickens for 4-H, I had the task of candling the eggs my hens laid. This was done, in my day (40's-50's) with a device that focused a light bulb down a metal cylinder that was narrower at one egg. You held up the egg and rotated it. The yolk would spin around. So would any spots. In earlier times, a candle would power the device (hence the term). I used a 25Watt bulb. Spotted eggs we kept. Clear ones we sold. People not born on chicken farms (we called it a farm but it was more like a small ranch) don't understand about spots. They think it is a disease. I was born on a chicken farm - actually had a house across the street since the farm was my paternal grandmother's home. I spent my very early years running over there, stepping barefoot in chicken droppings (a childhood horror) which was not a nice memory, or climbing up on the grain bags and straddling them like horses (a nice memory). There was a feed-store smell coming off the warm grain bags. The barn was warm. And it was an adventure. I was too little to understand but my parents were divorced. On Saturdays my sister and I were "sent over", or driven over, or something. It was also chicken-killing day. I assume there were other days but I have such vivid memories of those days. My father, long since passed on, was young then. Yet I cannot recall his face. I recall his body and his hands. Killing chickens. He struck their heads off with a hatchet. And then he upended them into a big oil drum fitted with a few funnels. In theory, they would bleed out into the drum before he would dip them in hot water (holding them by the feet) and slamming them (so it seemed to me) onto the rotating rubber blades of the de-feathering machine. If you have never smelled wet chicken feathers, count yourself lucky. Feathers flew. Probably why he was in an undershirt. I remember the tank-top, white undershirt. Now the chickens, having been beheaded, were to stay put in the drum. But they didn't. They are all nerves and they flop after being beheaded. They flop and twitch themselves right out of the funnel and down onto the driveway. They run (seriously, they do!) down the driveway. Which annoys my father who has to go fetch them. I watch this from my perch on a warm grain bag. I am the official lookout for runaway chickens. The record was a 50-foot run. A headless chicken running is a sight to see, or not, as the case may be. They run, ungainly is a word that comes to mind, wings flapping, and their severed neck flops back and forth. They actually tend to run in a straight line, more or less. More than they would if their heads were attached. You would understand this if you've ever startled a flock of chickens. I was scolded as a young child for doing that because it throws them off their egg-laying. I thought about this again when I was shopping. I found free-range chicken nest-laid eggs at $3.00 a dozen. I bought two dozen. The shells are harder. The yolks stand up taller (a measure of freshness). I think that they even taste better. We are so used to stale eggs, and most of us don't even know that the yolk is supposed to "stand up". These are brown eggs. The color of the shell has nothing to do with it. The color of the shell depends on the breed of the chicken. We had Bantums for fun (tiny eggs, fussy chickens), White Leghorns (good meat and eggs) and some red ones (prize winners, but I forget the breed - Rhode Island Red?). The farm is now Rockville High School. My father worked in a machine shop until he retired. He kept chickens long after he left the farm, only finally giving it up when the cost of single bags of feed exceeded the value of the eggs and meat. I raised chickens for 4-H until I went to college. I have always missed the double-yolk egg that my favorite hen used to lay in my hand every morning. Nothing like a fresh egg. I never candled her egg. It was breakfast. |
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