Southern Fried Chicken

I never told Bayno when Mama was going to make fried chicken. If I didn’t say anything, then all the cracklings in the pan would be mine. When the chicken was brown and crisp, I would take the spatula and press it against the bottom of the skillet and scrape the cracklings out of the grease, and when they were cool enough, I’d pour them into my mouth.

That summer was different from other summers even though the garden was the same. All its blooming and growing meant a good harvest along with back breaking work. Sometimes I’d stand in the middle of a row with both hands pressed into my back, my hands making a V and I would bend backwards and listen to all the bones popping and feel the muscles stretch so much they hurt. But with the sun beating down, I’d set my jaw and finish the row no matter if I was weeding, hoeing, or picking.

One day I thought about how many times I’d gone over those rows. Probably I’d been at each row at least 7 or 8 times. I multiplied that in my head, and then doubled it for the extra rows outside the fence and added some for when I’d be picking off bugs, and figured I’d been up and down those rows near to a thousand times already that summer.

But that was the first summer I’d spent without father coming home after work. It was easy to remember how it started. We had got up for school, and a man in a tractor came and plowed back the snow as Mama peered out the window, and when the driveway was clear we put on our coats and went to wait for the bus. When we came home father was already there, waiting for us outside the house. He told us to get in the backseat of the car while he got in front, gripping tight to the wheel as though he had somewhere to go, and I watched his face in the mirror as he told us he loved us, but he couldn’t stay where we lived, in the new house he’d built. And then he told us to get out of the backseat and go in the house by our mother, and we did.

The way we’d lived life had been thrown off schedule what with nothing to mark time the way scheduled work did. Father had always come home from the factory at 4:30 and we’d eat supper at 5 o’clock. I liked how every Tuesday we’d had tuna fish casserole, and every Wednesday, Mama had served pizza along with a shot of Black Label beer for everyone. I longed for a family that sat down to eat meals at 5 o’clock, eat them off Mama’s pretty Melmac plates, when Mama was happy and father was happy and brother smiled all the time and there was enough good food to eat. Mama would scold Bayno for eating her mashed potatoes with her fingers. I had realized that summer it was only just pretend and if anything was real at all, it was the pretty Melmac plates.

But that was all done now because father had taken all the money. We ate whatever was in season, what we could grow in the garden, along with eggs from the chickens. Lots of eggs. Lord knows how many times Mama gave thanks for those chickens. Only the old ones went into the fry pan, the oldest in the stew pot. And we had popcorn. It had been awhile since we’d had any bread, but we had popcorn, which last fall we had shelled by hand until our fingers bled.

Sometimes Mr. Kirby would bring a snapping turtle. He would nail it to the light pole by the thick part of its tail and brother would wave a stick in front of it until the turtle tried to grab it with that pointy hook tooth at the top of its mouth. And then Mama would lop off its head with an old machete she had just for that purpose. The turtle would dangle headless with its legs all jerking and moving while the blood drained out and pooled on the ground, sometimes still jerking at the end of the day even if Mama had cut its head off in the morning. Once I looked in the pan after Mama had cut it all up into cook-size pieces and some of the pieces were still moving.

Snapping Turtle (Picture from SESC)

Summer was near to end when Mr. Kirby came with another turtle, unusual for the time of year, as most of them came in the Spring. I stood next to Mama, standing with her back to the pole. I could never watch Mama swing. I stared at the grass waiting for the sound that would let me know it was over, and

“Aren’t you going to…”

“That turtle’s a she, and she’s crying. A tear just rolled down her cheek.”

I looked at Mama shaking, and then I looked at the turtle, and those sad eyes connected with mine. Sure enough, there rolled another tear, plopping in the sand below. I felt like something had reached all the way in from some deep dark far-away place and took hold of my heart and squeezed it dry. Mama took a breath. She pulled the nail out of the pole and hanging on to the tail of the turtle she walked across the road with it swinging upside down, swinging far out from her body so it couldn’t snap at her. With her strong arms she set the turtle down, pointed it toward the water and walked away without looking back. Mama came past me. “Go on and get your pole.”

I knew what that meant. If a fish decided to bite your hook and take your bait, well that was a whole lot different than lopping something’s head off when it didn’t want its head lopped off. Sometimes there was only so much a good woman could do.

This post was submitted by Julie Eger.

“The Country” means a hundred different things to a hundred different people. To me, it has always meant freedom.

There’s something about the lack of people and the open space that gives you an opportunity to stretch out and have an adventure. As a teenager that meant the ability to get into trouble without having someone on your back. Blow something up. Build a potato gun and shoot it at cars that whizzed by on Hwy 36. Build a tree house in the woods and use it as a base of operations for pine cone battles, runs to the bootlegger, or a place to stash our Playboy or OUI Magazines (which we pronounced as “O-U-I”, having no idea that it was French).

The country meant that in the summer you said goodbye to your mom at 7am and you got home when the streetlights came on. What you did in the intervening 13 hours was between you, your little brother, and whatever gang of boys you were running with that day.  You were 12-years-old.  You solved your own problems.  You made your own fun.

I grew up in a very small town in Northern Alabama. We had a “downtown”, some churches, a beat up shopping center and the rest was wide open Alabama farmland – patches of woods, cow pastures, creeks, ridges, and farmhouses.

When I was about 13 my pal Bucky Garner (I suppose I should change the names, but what the hell) who lived on a farm south of town invited Randy Asherbranner, Trev Wright and myself to sleep over on his land in a tent. Camping out was a pretty common activity and with enough land to set up away from his parent’s house we were in an excellent position to cause some trouble.  We were also pretty much guaranteed that his mom would still make pancakes for us in the morning, AND Bucky had a hot
older sister that we could sit and talk to early in the evening.

For some reason (it’s all a little foggy), we had decided that our main activity of the evening would be TP’ing Pam Beard’s yard. This was also known as “House Wrapping” or “Yard Rolling”.  Alabama is an EXCELLENT place to cover someone’s yard in toilet paper.  The relative humidity and dew points are so high that whatever you lay down at 2 or 3 in the morning is a sticky wet mess by the time they discover your handy work.

So, we got settled in – four boys in a Coleman tent. We had a little whiskey, played some cards by flashlight, and waited for everyone to go to bed.  We also revealed how much ammo we’d been able to smuggle out of our own bathrooms – a dozen rolls of two-ply TP.

There are two basic approaches to “rolling” someone’s yard. There’s the “We love you and we’re doing this to show how much we love you” approach. That’s all toilet paper. It gets you talked about at school on Monday and is relatively easy to clean up.

Then there’s the “We hate you, and we’re doing this to cause you as much pain as possible” approach. That is an action that takes more than toilet paper. We would buy a couple of bean bag chairs, cut the side with a razor and sling the Styrofoam “beans” all over the yard. It looks like snow, is impossible to clean up, and can kill the grass. There were some super sadists who would use bleach to write ugly comments in the grass…but I never personally went that far.

This was definitely a friendly “We love you!” kind of yard roll. Pam was a cheerleader, smart as a whip, pretty, and “one of the boys.” It was a love lick.

Around 1 am we set out. It was the country and about 2 miles to Pam’s house. We walked the roads, but in order to stay clear of the law when we saw headlights in the distance we would yell, “car!” and dive into the ditch. We finally made our way to Pam’s and the rolling began – in the trees, on the mailbox, in the bushes, whispering so as not to wake Pam’s very large, well armed father, Paul.  We rolled the cars, the bikes, and the basketball goal in the backyard. We did it up proud.

Exhausted and thrilled we started the walk back. Suddenly, I heard the “car!” warning and instead of diving in the damp ditch, I decided to make a run for the pasture where I could crouch. So, I ran like a wild man through the dark and BAM – next thing I knew I was flat on my back, wind knocked out of me. I had no idea what happened. I didn’t hurt exactly, but I could barely move. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that in the dark I had run headlong into a barbed wire fence. It had hit me across the mid chest, the mid-groin and thighs.

I stood up and looked at the front of my body. My shirt was ripped to shreds and there were holes in my pants, but I appeared to be completely injury free. It was dark, of course, but I couldn’t find a single mark or spot of blood.

Trev, Randy, and Bucky came running over and I said, “Well, it seems like I’m okay. Let’s head back.” We got down the road a piece and I started to feel terrible – dizzy, weird. I reached up to scratch my face and my hand was covered in blood. I looked at my chest and my entire body was soaked in blood. It turned out that the barbed wire had made dozens of tiny puncture wounds all over my body. Because the holes were so deep it had taken 5 minutes or so for them to start to bleed, but now… I was covered and feeling faint.

“Oh, My GOD!” They tried to carry me, but in the end they walked me back to the tent. Of course, it never occurred to us to wake Bucky’s parents and seek professional care. We made our own fun. We solved our own problems! Someone decided that the best course of action was to “sterilize” the wounds by pouring whiskey all over them. So, I was laid out on my sleeping bag, my tattered clothes were removed and Bucky doused me in Jack Daniel’s Old Number 7. Randy and Trev held me down and I put a rag in my mouth so the screams wouldn’t wake the dog.

Of course, the rest of the story plays as you know it must. Got home the next day.  Mom demanded an explanation. I lied. She browbeat me. I confessed. She lectured me about Lockjaw and called the doctor for an update to my Tetanus shots.

And that entire story is just to say this – when I see my nephews and short leash they have, it makes me sad that they will never experience the country life the way I did. The world has changed too much. There is so much, “Do you know where your children are?” and very little, “Be home when the streetlights come on.”

Kids don’t get to make their own fun and solve their own problems because mom and dad are 12 feet away watching every move. It all makes sense, but it’s very sad.

– Grant

This post was submitted by Grant Langston.

No question, about it.  Robin, having grown up on a farm, and learning all the skills that came with it, was nothing short of an expert marksman.  This wasn’t just with firearms.  Robin could hit a can off a fence from all the way across the field throwin’ a rock free handed.

Mike and Rob were off on one of their regular squirrel hunts, each with their safeties on, and their shotguns slanting to the ground as they’d been taught.  Normally, they’d head out the back pasture behind Robin’s farm.  Today, however, they chose to meander up the dirt road that ran in front of Rob’s house.

Hunting squirrel until each boy had two or three bouncing off each leg, hanging from their belts was the standard goal, but the boys always loved unexpected distractions.  It was no more than 50 yards up the road when the boys ran into a pair of young skunks.

Skunks were not welcome that close to the house.  So the boys figured it was their duty to dispatch them, or at least scare them well enough that they’d know not to come around there again.   The problem with dispatching them was that Rob’s folks frowned on the boys discharging their firearms near their house or, worse, close to one of the neighbors’ houses.  So, scarin’ the pests was the only alternative remaining.

How similar they looked to the very squirrels that the boys prized so much.  Yet, borrowin’ an analogy from W. H. Auden, the difference was like that between lighting and a lighting bug.   Sound similar, but one packs a much bigger punch.

Robin, being the country veteran that he was, knew to hang back a ways.  Mike, being the “city boy” with less sense, pushed forward more aggressively to nobly rid Robin’s family of these pests.

“Yaw! Yaw! Git! Git! Git outta hear! ” Mike shouted at the two skunks that trotted ahead of him.  They sped up a little, but didn’t seem too concerned.

Mike noticed that when he shouted, their tails stood almost straight up as though at attention, but they kept moving.  “Yaw! Yaw! Git outta hear!”  Mike drew nearer and nearer to the one on the left, as Rob fell further behind.

Mike thought he was doing a pretty good job, but then the lead skunk, on the left, closest to Mike, turned and stopped.  Rob seeing that his friend was about to get into a “conversation”  he’d later regret, finally decided it was time to act.  He would just toss a rock at them to spook them away.

Like a bullet cutting through the wind, Mike hear the whiz of Robin’s rock as it zipped past him.  Rob had a problem NOT hitting whatever he was aiming at.

Rob’s rock hit the little guy right between the eyes.  The skunk almost did a flip, fell right over on its back, and in its last living moment gave Mike a gift that kept on giving.  Spray, spray, spray, spray, were its final pulses of revenge.

Then, the poor skunk lay lifeless, at Mike’s feet  …  and Mike was … no longer a welcome hunting partner that day.

Not so uncommon, but entirely true Story from about 1969.

This post was submitted by Mike Strong.