Hi
When I was a child my dad raised chickens. He was a farm boy from the time
he was old enough to work at all (which was very young) until I was born.
now there isn't anything really special about that except all the fun
we had playing in the chicken coop, watching new chicks hatch: gathering eggs
from strange places, like the back of dad's old car bumper to the highest spot
in our old garage. We always chased and held, oohed and aahed over the chicks and
Hated the day papa said the chickens were past laying and needed to be replaced.
Everything was normal to us until I was about 71/2 and we moved. Papa
loaded up the chickens and moved them with us. He never gave a thought to the
fact we were moving from county to a lake cottage that was surrounded
by city folk! The neighbors had a fit! so papa slaughtered all the chickens except
for one rooster. Charlie. Papa could not catch Charlie and it ate at
him something bad. In the mean time my brother and I made friends with Charlie and
found him to be very smart. Charlie had one leg because he had a run in with a 1950
chevy sedan and lived to crow about it. He spent most of his time high up in a
pine that was just outside our back door. As the months wore on we got Charlie
to crow on cue, jump one legged through an old metal barrel hoop we found and sit
in our lap and let us stroke his soft shiny feathers. The problem was, every
morning at day break Charlie would strut out on a branch of the pine and crow for
a good 1/2 hour! Oh My did the vacationers have a fit! Our party line was occupied
with calls to our cottage to "shut that darn bird up!" Papa swore that Charlie had to go!
He tried many times to trap Charlie but he always got away to our delight.
As the summer crowd began to leave and return to their city homes and school,
the calls got fewer. We never suspected that Papa still had it in for Charlie.
At the same time he was laid off from his shop job and thing were scarce.
One beautiful fall day we came home to the cottage filled with a luscious smell of
fried chicken, mashed potatoes and biscuits. It was the tenderest chicken there
 ever was ! so we though until we decided to go feed Charlie! There under that same pine lay his beautiful feathers .We knew then Papa had won and Charlie's crowing days were over. Even though we missed him, we always  had the great memories of his antics and he gave us a meal we really needed.