Granddaddy Raised Chickens

Granddaddy Raised Chickens

As a child, some of my most fascinating and at the same time horrifying experiences were watching my grandparents transform living, breathing, clucking chickens into lifeless headless, featherless, gutless globs of meat that they sold to customers who wanted truly fresh chickens. I think I have blocked out a lot of the process, and I’m sure I would be totally lost if I had to kill and dress a chicken by myself, but for my Grandmother and Granddaddy it was a five-day-a-week job.

People would call their house and order 2 fryers, about 2 pounds apiece, or a stewing hen, or maybe eggs. Usually they’d call in the morning so by afternoon there’d be a list of orders to fill. I vaguely remember that they had lots of Jewish customers because Granddaddy would slit the throats of the chickens and let the blood drain out. They’d be all the while flapping and swirling, hanging from a clothesline where he had fastened each one upside down by its legs. Grandddaddy’s khaki work clothes always had tiny spots of red, added to during each day’s slaughter.

Most of the rest of the process took place inside a converted out-building, with tubs of water, newspaper on the floor, and sharp knives. I seem to remember a wash pot with boiling water just outside the building, where the chickens were dipped, held by their feet under the scaling water until their feathers came loose. Then Granddaddy would pull great handfuls of feathers out and put them in a bin. Some people bought the feathers after they were washed to make feather pillows.

But Grandmother had the grossest job. She was the one who, after she cut off the neck, would reach her hand inside the cavity and pull out the innards. They’d go splashing into a big enamel pan and then Grandmother would poke through the mess and cut loose the liver and the gizzard. Totally and absolutely the grossest thing I had ever seen.

Eventually, the cleaned chicken, all plucked and rinsed, would get wrapped up in white butcher paper along with its neck, liver, and gizzard, and Grandddaddy would mark the outside with the chicken’s weight and who had ordered it. Then it went into a commercial sized cooler to rest beside the stacks of eggs that Grandmother had collected earlier in the day.

In late afternoon, people began arriving to pick up their chickens and eggs they had ordered. Granddaddy enjoyed swapping news and jokes with the men who came, while Grandmother got them change for their $10 bill.

Fascinating as it was, I used to think that no one would ever eat their chicken if they really knew what it had been through since morning.