Pop's Favorite Chick Was a Knockout (and Learning To Pray)
Posted: Tuesday, June 28, 2011
by John Brazell
Country kids get a leg up on their city counterparts when it comes to learning the basics of life.
It's one thing to read about "Old McDonald" and yet another to put on your old shoes and clean out his chicken coop. Even when you're in single digits - seven, eight or nine - you begin to suspect there's more than a passing resemblance of animal behavior to that of the human race. Moms and Pops have it easier when it comes time for the most dreaded of all conversations.
With country parents it's pretty much, "Do you remember when we brought Harvey the bull, down to meet Bessie, the cow ..."
My sisters and I were "hybrids" to use a word now applied to cars, and words to a song, "I'm a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll." We lived on several acres, with a large garden, dogs, cats, a horse and barnyard animals, only a few miles from town.
As a kid there weren't many things I enjoyed more than playing baseball unless it was not shelling peas or digging potatoes. I probably had the best baseball glove - a JC Higgins Classic that I slept with - in the neighborhood and for sure the best backstop. The chicken pen meandered around several trees and provided forty-feet of fence sufficient to stop errant balls, except for occasional foul tips.
Pop was a strict disciplinarian and the quintessential Irishman - smart, exacting, sandy-red hair, blue eyes, quick temper, and appreciation for the manly sport of fisticuffs. To my knowledge Pop didn't imbibe, but what he lacked in the fine art of tippling was amply filled by his father. My respect for Pop was only surpassed by my fear of angering him.
He seemed more attached to the chickens than most of the other animals. Perhaps it was because there were more of them and he was especially fond of eggs and fried chicken. But neither did they require as much care; just throw out some hen scratch, fill up the water trough, and gather the eggs. What I didn't understand was the presence of the meanest rooster ever in captivity. He was the missing page in my "Birds and Bees" tutorial.
On this day we had gathered enough players for a softball game; my sisters and a few other neighborhood kids. Early in the game a foul tip carried the ball over the fence and into the chicken pen. Generally with a little stretching and help from a bat you could retrieve the ball, but not this time. Not a soul living or dead who had ever witnessed the territorial ferocity of the rooster would want any part of going into that pen. But I wanted to play ball.
I gathered up my courage, greatly enhanced by the bat in my hand, and waited for the right moment. At a time when the chickens and rooster were in the coop resting - or whatever they did - I tiptoed into the pen and made a dash for the ball. I had just picked it up when a blast of feathers, spurs and fury came tearing around the corner.
Out of sheer reflex and mortal fear I swung the bat and hit the rooster flush on the head. He dropped in his tracks and lay still, dead still. The entire group of ragtag ball players stood, fingers numbed from clutching the fence, and stared in disbelief. I had killed Pop's favorite barnyard animal. I bent to take a closer look and the reality of life, then death, hit me. I, too, was as good as dead.
A shaky voice from outside the fence suggested I pour water on the heap of feathers in hopes the old rooster was still clinging to life. It was later that I assumed it was God or Oral Roberts. I doused his head, punched the body lightly once or twice, and wearily left the pen.
I rejoined the group standing somberly outside the fence wondering what to do next. Aside from running away, what could I do? Someone suggested we say a prayer, and like a ten-year-old teetering on a gallows, I readily agreed. There in the heat of a hot Texas afternoon five or six kids said a silent prayer for the meanest and most worthless living thing you could ever imagine.
As we watched and hoped, in a matter of seconds the old rooster began to twitch and move, slowly and haltingly, then more. Finally he stood, though uneasily, shook his once proud head and wobbled slowly back to the safety of his perch and feathered harem. We looked at each other and cheered.
The old rooster was never as imposing or ferocious after this encounter. I don't know how he was in the romance department. Funny thing, I don't think Pop ever knew, but the hens probably did
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Great read John. You weaved such a wonderful story. Thanks for writing this.Edward, thanks so much. At my age, there's no need to write fiction as life itself crafts so many stories. Best to you.
John
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