I am queasy about seeing anything killed to eat. Our beef was butchered at a processing plant so I never witnessed the butchering. We dressed young roosters to eat back in the late 1940’s and 50’s. I could not "murder" a chicken, so Wayne killed them for me, five at a time. The bucket of scalding water would get too cool to scald more than five chickens. When Wayne killed chickens he used an old tree stump in the yard for a chopping block. He laid them on it and while holding their feet, he chopped their heads off with an axe. His mother always wrung her chicken's necks off and threw them away from her. It only took a few twists and a throw. Chickens running around a few moments is usual for a beheaded chicken. It takes a while for them to stop flopping around. Wayne's mother often fried a chicken as soon as it was dressed. I never cooked a chicken until after a few hours of chilling the meat in the refrigerator or ice water. There is a knack for scalding chickens to loosen the feathers for plucking. One has to douse the chicken up and down in the scalding water just long enough to loosen the feathers. Holding them in the scalding water too long will partially cook the shin making them harder to dress. It is also hard pluck the feathers when they are under processed. Mama lit a jar lid partially filled with alcohol to sear or burn off the small "hair" after plucking and before dressing them. I despised the smell of the burning feathers as well as the odor of wet feathers. I rarely ate a fried chicken right after dressing them. We dressed at least 150 chickens every summer. My sis, Lila, usually came to help me. We did it outside and used wash tubs full of cool water. After cutting up the chicken, we placed them in a cardboard container with the inside coated with wax. Next we covered them with water to keep them fresh and to prevent freezer burn. When we had a bunch prepared, we took them directly to the locker plant where we had a rented locker box. That way, when we went to town for groceries, we could bring however many chickens home we wanted. We did not have a deep freeze until a few years later. One time, when I opened our locker that was on the end of the isle, I found a pheasant in our drawer. I have always wondered how many chickens we lost that year, because when you opened an end drawer you could reach down into the drawer below it. Only the end ones were like that. Our grandchildren love chicken and noodles and like to observe me making noodles. They often snitch a raw noodle to eat. I do not like to see them eat them raw, but they love them and all of our kids survived eating them.

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Created December 26, 2020

Updated: 14 June, 2021

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