Thursday, April 7, 2011

Back on the Farm






The colonoscopy is in my past.  Now I can get on with my life.
Back in the early days it took a lot of planning to do anything. You had to set aside many hours to accomplish anything. We had no modern shortcut tools to do anything with. Even making a cake. Now you can pull a cake mix out of the cupboard and make a cake. Back then you had to mix the thing up from scratch. That means you had to scratch around in the cupboard and find a cup of this and a spoonful of that and finally you had all the ingredients together,you had no mixer, they had not been invited yet. So you had to beat the cake by hand with a large spoon for five minutes or so as hard as you could.
It was not a lot of fun so we only had it on very special occasions. On Sunday we sometimes enjoyed a fantastic treat of fried chicken and let me tell you, here and now, fried chicken was much tastier in those days then it is now or we certainly would not have gone to so much trouble to have it. First we had to catch the poor defenseless chicken and that part was easy because they trusted us, we were the ones that fed them. Excuse me, I think I am going to shed a tear now as I think of it. Poor old chickens. 
I am not going to go into detail on how the slaying was accomplished because it was gross. The thought of that procedure brings back such traumatizing memories that I may need to see a therapist if I dwell on it. I seemed to be the only one that was disturbed about it. Let me tell you what they did after the chicken was dead. They had a bucket of scalding hot water and they dipped the chicken up and down in the water as causally as if they were dipping apples in hot chocolate. People were so heartless then. Now some people even let chickens and pigs live in their house.
The next ritual was plucking all the feathers out of the chicken. There was one more torturous step. The chicken had its limbs cut off, its heart cut out and finally was dipped in flour and put in a frying hot pan of lard. Shortening had not been born yet.  Life was tough back then.  You probably are dying to know how they killed pigs for food. I will spare you of that one because I was at school while it went on, but I heard stories about how it was done. Life was tough back then, but it had its good side. People didn’t have to have colonoscopies. 

5 comments:

Unknown said...

If it wasn't for the time spent drinking that junk they give you it wouldn't be so bad. I lay on the gurny and they put me to sleep and later I wake up, get dressed and go home. Instant rest. That is the good part.
Mama used to make me go & get her a chicken & after I caught it, I would literally ring it's neck and would have it's head in my hand and it would be jumping across the yard. Really gross but that was life back then. The chicken did taste better, especially at grandma's.
Odie

Lorrene said...

Yes, Odie. I can still see the chicken without it's head jumping all over the place.
I didn't have to do the wringing of the neck.

Mike Starring said...

I just saw the chickens running around with no heads today. I turned on CNN and they had pictures of the congressmen trying to pass a budget.
Glad your test is over with.

Lorrene said...

Mike, that is A perfect description of the congressmen.
Maybe we'll have some new chickens on the ballet next time.

Jimh. said...

I'm betting the LARD is what gave that chicken the flavor! It sure does the trip with Carnitas, one of my favorite Mexican dishes!