August 11, 2011
“What can I say? Americans love fried chicken."- Harry Balzer, national expert on food and diet trends
Remember Jake's famous line about fried chicken in the iconic Blues Brothers movie of 1980?
Jake: Bring me four fried chickens and a Coke.
Mrs. Murphy: You want chicken wings or chicken legs?
Jake: Four fried chickens and a Coke.
Obviously, Jake loved his fried chicken. Viewers thought the line was hilarious because obviously no one eats four fried chickens at one sitting. Right?
Not so fast.
In the 50s when it came time to "dress" chickens on the farm, folks ate a lot of chicken, maybe not four at a time but a lot.
Chicken for lunch and chicken for dinner every day, and no one complained.
We loved our fresh fried chicken.
I am remembering what Kansas City Star columnist and humorist Bill Vaughn once said about fried chicken.
While talking about the good old days, Bill Vaughan quipped, "A convenience food today is one that is already cooked. In grandmother's time it was a chicken she didn't have to kill personally."
Those of us who grew up in the 50s, especially those on a farm, know exactly what Bill Vaughan meant and will remember the summer ritual known as "dressing chickens."
Or, I should I say--killing chickens we knew personally.
Young readers may not understand and may want to cover their ears for the rest of this story.
If you did not grow up on a farm, you may have missed this practice, but if you did, you know exactly what I mean.
In those days, my grandmother was the chief chicken dresser (a polite term for chicken killer).
Here is how this ceremonial chore unfolded.
When chicken-butchering time arrived, my grandmother, mother, and all relatives within shouting distance marched resolutely to the chicken house.
Grandma set up a caldron of boiling water in the yard. My mother's job was to catch the squawking chickens, hold them upside down by the legs, and hand them over to my grandmother.
Grandma would twist the chicken's neck, lay it on the ground, and step on its neck with her boot. Then, she would pull the head off and let the chicken flop around headless squirting blood everywhere.
It was a comical sight because sometimes the chicken would get up and walk, minus the head of course.
After the required amount of time passed, the women took turns picking up the flopping chickens holding them by their feet and dipping the bodies into the caldron's scalding water.
My grandmother and mother seemed to know exactly how long was long enough. At the perfect moment, they would hand off the wet, smelly chickens to us kids to pluck.
Incidentally, one can never forget the smell of a wet chicken.
With eyes wide open in astonishment, we kids took the wet chickens in one hand and began picking off the feathers with the other. That was our job.
We did not complain because for the next two weeks, we feasted on fried chicken and all the trimmings. That was our payoff.
Mashed potatoes covered with salt and pepper and white chicken gravy, homemade rolls with real butter, green beans from the garden cooked with bacon grease and onions, corn on the cob slathered with butter, homegrown tomatoes, and strawberry shortcake, a flat shortbread served with thick cream direct from the cow and strawberries straight from the patch.
I make no judgment about the way we ate in those days except to say this.
I can smell and taste that glorious food still. We ate the same fare everyday at dinner (noon) and again at supper for two solid weeks while the chickens were fresh. (Note of explanation to the younger crowd--no one had a deep freezer, so we had to eat up all the chickens while they were fresh.)
And, we never tired of eating fried chicken because, like Jake, we loved our fried chicken.
