Easter Chickens

A friend recently sent me an email that contained pictures of colored Easter Chicks.    In the 1950s each Easter season the grocery stores would sell colored Easter chicks.  My grandmother had chickens at her farm.  I loved getting the eggs and going to the chicken yard.

I was probably four years old when the neighbors next door got two of the colored Easter chicks for their kids. My dad  agreed that I could have one, but not one of the colored ones, because they might not be healthy.  He and I went to the feed store and picked out a chick, running wildly in the pen with probably 100 others.

I guess they had read me a book with a chick name Eggbert in it so that is what I decided to name him...then there was the egg laying incident, she became Eggberta.  The neighbor's two kids and myself had thoroughly spoiled these birds.  They were used to being carried around, petted and now expected and demanded attention.  

After one of the neighbor’s birds started crowing their parents and mine decided it was time for the three birds to go to my grandparents dairy farm in Oklahoma....a short 8 hour drive from our house.   After they were all delivered, the neighbor’s birds assimilated into chicken yard life pretty well, but not so for Eggberta.  She, it seemed felt too good for the chicken yard.  Her feelings became known when she terrorized the other chickens, chased them, pecked them and then started standing in the doorway of the chicken house, allowing no one into the nesting boxes to lay eggs.  Since my grandmother sold her eggs this was not going fly.

Grannie had planned to kill Eggberta for dinner, but since she had such a willful personality, decided to put it off for awhile.  She let Egberta have the run of her backyard, instead of being in the chicken yard, which she loved.  At least at first.  Then one afternoon Papa came in from milking and left the door to the screened porch open while he was changing clothes.  Eggberta walked right in and found it to be to her liking.  Her favorite place to sit was on top of the long deep freezer on the porch, which was warm, with a slight vibration when the motor ran.  However, after that first afternoon she started laying her eggs while on the freezer....and since the top was rounded, they rolled right off and crashed onto the floor of the screened porch.  This pushed Grannie’s patience to the very limits.  Papa said it was time to eat Eggberta, but Grannie said she had never had to eat a chicken with a name.

After few days one of Grannie’s cousins showed up.  They had agreed to take Eggberta and eat her since they did not know her name and did not know her...period.  Once again Eggberta was loaded into the car, this time off to slaughter. After she had been gone a few days, the cousin called Grannie.  She asked, “Was this chicken a pet?  She has the most peculiar personality and keeps running into the house every chance she gets.”  Finally Grannie fessed up and told her the story of Eggberta.  Her cousin, it turned out didn’t mind having a pet chicken.  Her freezer was in the garage and it didn’t have a rounded top.  She put Eggberta’s nesting box on the freezer.  Each time Eggberta layed an egg she ran to the back door, and started banging the screen with her beak.  When someone came out and got it, she would go on her way scratching and pecking.   She lived a long life and, as my grandfather told the story, “Died of old age."

Hanging Baskets

Our neighborhood has a 1920s style to it...Vintage...Vintage Township actually. For the first two years we lived here, I looked out at the old fashioned lamp posts thinking how nice it would be if there was a way to hang baskets of flowers on them.  Then last summer my neighbor Rick, told me he would get the hanging brackets from another lamp post in the neighborhood and put it on my post..which he did. I had beautiful flowers blooming and drooping from the baskets all summer.

A week or two ago I took the long dead baskets down, and replanted them for another season of blooms.  Today they had started to bloom and it was the day to hang them.  I got the ladder and carried it around to the front.  As I was opening it a huge gust of wind came up and almost sent the ladder over on top of me.  I reposistioned it, firmer on the ground, placed one of the hanging pots on the painter’s shelf and started up the ladder.....just as I got to the top, one of Lubbock’s  50 mph gusts whipped around the corner.  I had just gotten the basket in my hand when the wind ripped it from me, and grabbed the ladder from under my feet.  I grasped at the air as my arms went around the top of the lamppost, my legs wrapping around it what seemed like three times.  I could see the toppled ladder and all I could think about was whether to slide down...or to just drop to the ground.  “Hey Jan!!”  I looked around.  There sat Matt in his car at the stop sign.  “Are you really thinking about hanging those baskets in this wind?”  I smiled, and looked down at the baskets in the wagon.

“Well yeah I had been sort of thinking about it....the wind is pretty high though.....maybe I will wait until this afternoon now that I think about it. How are Betsy and the kids?

“Oh they are fine....how’s Jim?’'

“Good, good.”

“ You take care...and let the wind die down before you get up on that ladder.!!

“ Will do Matt, will do.”

The Little Handmade Dish

My mother was one of those people who did everything well....almost.  She loved academics, any challenge on that level she was able to ace.  She went to college, while working full-time and graduated in three years with close to a 4.0.  She taught for almost fifty years and left a trail of awards and admirers everywhere she went.  I only knew one person who didn’t like her, and that was her older brother.

When I was in junior high, and not nearly the student she wanted me to be, she was working on her master’s degree in education.  She enrolled for her summer classes, and appeared home that day, very distraught. She and my dad discussed the problem out of my earshot. Several days later while she was away at class, my dad was reading the paper chuckling.  I asked what was so funny.  He told me, “Your mom is so stressed out over that silly art class.” ART CLASS? I thought.  Why on earth would anyone be stressed over an art class.  I was amazed.

My mom with all of her brilliance and abilities, had somehow missed out on the artsy gene.  She could be creative when doing lesson plans or planning a seminar for teachers, but creating something with her hands was overwhelming.  The whole six weeks of that class she was a basket case.  She checked out books on art and read everything she could to decide what she would do her project on......Dad and I leaning forward in our chairs trying to see what she was coming up with. She was silent about it though, when we inquired.

At the end of the first summer session, she came home and announced she had indeed gotten an A in her art class.  We were somewhat happy for her, but most of all we wanted to see this project.  Finally she presented them.  One was a ceramic shape thingy with a hole in the top, for hanging.  It was colored in black white and red, and had been fired to a glossy finish.  The other was a little dish, almost flat but had the sides turned up.  It was grey on the outside and red with black speckles on the inside, also fired glossy.  The best I could figure, an ashtray.  I had never seen her prouder of anything in my life.  For the remainder of her life she kept the little dish, always displayed on an end table or coffee table.

Sadly when she died I gave it away.  Not to just anyone, but to her granddaughter that she adored.  I thought my daughter would treasure it as she had.  When I saw it last it was on the side of the sink in my daughter’s house with the brillo pad in it.  When our daughter married she threw away our family, and evidently her grandmother as well.  I wish I had never given it away.  I really have more than the little dish though....I have the memories.