Young Marshall

[epaul]

Rare footage of young Marshall (and friends) on his grandpa's farm:



www.facebook.com/reel/806576471527421

[Marshall]

I like the hat.

But no such barnyard critters would ever touch my lips.



I don't see no mulberries.

[Marshall]

I spend a bunch of time with my 97 YO mother. There's ups and downs in doing that. But one thing I enjoy is getting her talk about her early life. And as it turns out, her parents had a grocery store in the Pilsen area of Chicago when she was a little girl. Little Bohemia. They lived in the apartment over the store. Roosevelt and Tremble. But in the crash of the Great Depression they lost the business and the house. She was only 6 then, and has fague memories of the store. The building is still there.

So they went to live in their country cottage, - which was still in the city limits out near Cumberland and the forest preserve. When they moved there, the building they lived in was meant to be a garage. But they converted it into a tiny residence. And there were no other houses on the block back then. (It's a built up city neighborhood now days). There had been a house next door, but it had burned down. So mom's dad built a chicken coup on the foundation and they raised chickens and sold eggs in the neighborhood. My grandfather died before I was born. My mom was 16 at the time. So I never knew him in any way. I remember my gramma well.

To this day my mom doesn't like to eat chicken, because they were her pets. When a hen got too old to lay eggs, they'd off her head, pluck her, and have chicken for dinner.

[Marshall]

PS - My Gramma lived in that tiny house until she passed away about 40 years ago. We used to visit there a lot. My dentist, as a child, had an office a few blocks away. So I kept going to him, and visiting gramma, every so often, until he retired.

When my parents got married, they lived with Rose (Gramma) in that house for a couple years. Really cramped. I was a baby in that house for a year.

[drlj]

There was no color film when Marshall was that age.

Depression era chickens.
Being the youngest by 21 years means there are plenty of pictures of my brothers and a couple sisters in bib overalls, barefoot in a yard with no grass, carrying a chicken. It was a version of playing with your food, I guess, but once those hens stopped laying eggs the stewpot came out.
By the time I came along, we were in a better area of town—the yard had grass—and an acre of garden along the river did a lot of the feeding. There were still the occasional chickens in the picture, but there are no pictures of me carrying one around like a doll.
One of my most traumatic childhood memories has to do with me at 9, 12 roosters, and an axe. I call it Bloody Sunday.

Barb’s parents owned a Mom&Pop grocery and they lived behind it. Upstairs was rented to relatives. She never had a chicken to carry around but her yard didn’t have grass either.

[billhammond]

Jun 10, 2024 23:46:00 GMT -5 Marshall said:

She was only 6 then, and has fague memories of the store. The building is still there.

So they went to live in their country cottage, - which was still in the city limits out near Cumberland and the forest preserve. When they moved there, the building they lived in was meant to be a garage. But they converted it into a tiny residence. And there were no other houses on the block back then. (It's a built up city neighborhood now days). There had been a house next door, but it had burned down. So mom's dad built a chicken coup on the foundation and they raised chickens and sold eggs in the neighborhood.

"Fading" + "vague" = "fague." I like it!

When poultry takes over the barnyard = "chicken coup." I like it!

[dradtke]

We have old pictures of my grandma on the farm surrounded by a flock of chickens. My mom told me Grandma would carry them and stroke their heads and put drops in their eyes - and then wring their necks without a second thought.

[Village Idiot]

When I was growing up every city kid like me had a fairly close family of relatives who lived on a farm, so both sides had a familiarity with the aspects of both cultures. As result I can clean a chicken, but it's a very long affair and not worth the time it takes for me to do it. Not like the grandparent or great aunt who could step out in the chicken yard and come back in with a completely dressed and de-feathered oven-ready bird in what seemed like a matter of moments.

[david]

My sister received a live purple (dyed) chicken as an Easter gift one year. It turned out to be a mean white rooster. When I was 8 or 9 years old it always chased me and my dog out of its chicken yard many times when I tried to collect eggs from our chicken coop.

I recollect chopping its head off with a hatchet while my dad held it on the chopping block. The body fell off the block and literally ran around for about 20 - 30 feet. We dressed it (cleaned out its innards). Later my mom dunked it in hot water and we removed the feathers. She saved the finer feathers for pillows, as she did with a lot of the ducks and geese that we hunted.

I had no regrets about killing and eating that darned mean rooster.

[dradtke]

Our daughter use to work with a guy who had chickens. His little daughters used to play with the chickens and dress them up with jewelry and paint their toenails red. Somehow they ended up with one rooster in the bunch that dad was going to have processed. His daughters were near tears at the rooster's fate and were trying to pet it and comfort it while dad was putting it into a box - then it pecked them. Instantly the girls were saying, "Kill him, Dad!" They ate him for supper, with glee.

[howard lee]

I grew up in eastern Queens, NY. No one had chickens, except for the Haitian family who purchased the house in which I spent my first 18 years. The neighborhood was being scooped up by many families from the Caribbean. When I was wee, there was a dairy farm still operating just over the county line, in Nassau County, called Gouz ("Rhymes with Cows"). Families could visit and see the cows, buy milk, chocolate milk (in glass bottles!), etc; they may have had some chickens there, too, but so long ago I don't remember.

The Long Meadow in Prospect Park used to have grazing sheep, but that was in the 19th Century, a couple of years before I was born.

[Marshall]

WOW ! Howard was a Country Boy !

[epaul]

I had pet chickens at various points in my childhood (and briefly, in young adulthood).

One Easter, my brother and I received three colored chicks, pink, blue, and orange. We named them Falcon, Thunderbird, and Fairlane. They became quite tame and would perch on our arms and gently peck any mosquitoes that dared to land and try drill. Later in the summer, as pullets, they started laying small eggs, the finding of which hearkened back to our favored tradition of their Easter arrival. Come fall, we gave them to our neighbor who kept chickens for egg production.

We also had a small flock of Bantams (very colorful small chickens) for several years. They kept the yard free of bugs and ticks. They had a nice coop, but often they preferred to roost on a nearby tree. (wings unclipped, chickens can fly, if only for a short distance. Bantams, being smaller and not heavy bodied, can fly pretty well ((again, for short distances)).

One thing I learned from the chickens we intermittently kept, I much preferred the taste of store-bought eggs. Eggs from true free range chickens, chickens that eat bugs and grubs all day long, are pretty gamey with extremely dark, strongly flavored (in not a good way) yolks. I prefer eggs from grain-fed hens.


(same with venison. If the deer has been feeding in meadows and soybean fields, oh, so tasty. If the deer has been eating nothing acorns and tree branches, forget about it. There aren't enough onions in the world to fix that taste.)

[howard lee]

Jun 12, 2024 11:05:56 GMT -5 Marshall said:

WOW ! Howard was a Country Boy !

My late friend and mentor, Darrell, said I was "a country boy covered over with a few layers of city veneer."

[drlj]

Jun 12, 2024 12:42:14 GMT -5 howard lee said:

Jun 12, 2024 11:05:56 GMT -5 Marshall said:

WOW ! Howard was a Country Boy !

My late friend and mentor, Darrell, said I was "a country boy covered over with a few layers of city veneer."

Darrell was quite the kidder!🫢😁

[drlj]

Jun 11, 2024 20:42:40 GMT -5 david said:

My sister received a live purple (dyed) chicken as an Easter gift one year. It turned out to be a mean white rooster. When I was 8 or 9 years old it always chased me and my dog out of its chicken yard many times when I tried to collect eggs from our chicken coop.

I recollect chopping its head off with a hatchet while my dad held it on the chopping block. The body fell off the block and literally ran around for about 20 - 30 feet. We dressed it (cleaned out its innards). Later my mom dunked it in hot water and we removed the feathers. She saved the finer feathers for pillows, as she did with a lot of the ducks and geese that we hunted.

I had no regrets about killing and eating that darned mean rooster.

I think I told this before, but when I was about 9, we got 12 dyed chicks at Easter. It was very prevalent at the time. Stupid thing to do to a living chick. They sold for 10¢ at the local hatchery.
We figured they would grow into layers, we’d have eggs, and, when the eggs stopped, we’d have chicken and dumplings.
Problem was all 12 were roosters. Noisy, mean, nasty roosters.
One day my old man came to my room and said, “let’s take care of the roosters.”
I figured new pen or maybe some food.
I headed out to the backyard where my dad had the roosters. He pulled out an ax, put rooster #1’s head between two nails he had driven in a tree and WHACK! Off went the first head and the rooster’s headless body took off across the yard headed for parts unknown. I just stood there until the old man said, “well, go get him!”
I gathered 12 rooster carcasses from the neighbors’ yards, from under parked cars, from window wells, and along fences and carried the headless bodies back home where a huge cauldron of water was set to boil. We dipped them in the water( which has a special kind of stink), plucked them, cleaned them, and then, if I remember right, they went into the freezer in the basement, and became stews, soups, and other fine delicacies.
“Taking care” of something has a special meaning to me.
I have no memory of eating them, but I am sure I did.

[Village Idiot]

Jun 12, 2024 11:35:55 GMT -5 epaul said:

One thing I learned from the chickens we intermittently kept, I much preferred the taste of store-bought eggs. Eggs from true free range chickens, chickens that eat bugs and grubs all day long, are pretty gamey with extremely dark, strongly flavored (in not a good way) yolks. I prefer eggs from grain-fed hens.

I agree with you on that. Although there are some people who don't.

stuartfarm.com/pasture-raised-eggs/#:~:text=Store%20bought%20eggs%20are%20usually,the%20eggs%20taste%20sooooo%20good!