So here's all you need to know about my aversion to all things poultry. When I was a wee bairn Mom took me to the movies. The matinee at the majestic American Theater that Saturday was a film called "The Birds". Mom believed it to be an Audubon film and educational. It turned out to be a Hitchcock masterpiece.
A decade later I saw the lovely Suzanne Pleshette starring on the 'Bob Newhart Show'. I shuddered in horror because 'I saw you dead!', eyes pecked out laying on the curb, shoes askew. Poor, poor Suzanne.
Not two months later my Cub Scout pack, Pack 12, took a tour of the Stouffer's food processing plant near Cleveland. That particular day, the good people at Stouffer's made chicken pot pies. Back in the early 1960s it was not uncommon to ship poultry on flat bed trailers. Stacks of chickens in crates would be loaded on the trailer and shipped off for 'processing'. The chickens on the outside of their crates, so neatly stacked on the open trucks, were drunk with velocity, hurtling down the Ohio Turnpike at 70 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the chickens packed away in the interior were practically suffocated by the other chickens. But each fowl's fate was sealed as they pulled into the Stouffer's factory lot.
The Cub Scouts were welcomed into the plant and asked to don a hair net. Then we were led onto the factory floor. At this point, I have to say that I always loved visiting factories. The mechanics of the places fascinated me. Watching the process of a giant roll of paper become #10 business envelopes or a bin of russet potatoes miraculously become a bag of chips never failed to get my full attention.
But this visit changed my outlook.
The first thing we saw was a line of chickens hanging upside down on a conveyor. The chicken's heads were already severed and they swung to and fro from station to station. There were workers wearing brown aprons and armed with straight razors finishing off the feather plucking process. One of these workers who was aware of the 20 or so young boys turned to acknowledge us. He grinned with his yellow teeth and blood spattered face and saluted us with his razor. The stuff dreams are made of.
That was enough for me and I ran out, followed by my Den Mother, Mrs. Johnson.
Well, wouldn't ya know it, but later that autumn we were playing tackle football on the lawn at The Big House. We had the largest lawn in the neighborhood and hosted every athletic completion from whiffle ball tournaments to sledding in the winter. Our end zones were the 15 feet beyond the old peony bed on the west and the side edge of Pop's garden shed on the east.
One of the neighborhood cats had caught, killed and partially eaten one of Mr. Weaver's carrier pigeons and did all that in the west end zone. And it was into this gore that Mark Sayre tackled me. Entrails, feathers and blood splattered all over me convinced me, along with the long trail of traumatic sights I had already been exposed to to swear off having anything at all to do with anything sporting feathers now and forever.
Years later I went to a concert at the Blossom Music Center outside Akron. It was Jackson Browne in 1976. At the time, it was customary to watch concerts, particularly outdoor concerts, in a haze of cannabis smoke. I had not had dinner and only a cursory luncheon. That coupled with my inebriation caused a hunger that I can only imagine is suffered by Ethiopians or concentration camp prisoners.
There was a bucket of Colonel Sander's Kentucky Fried Chicken in the van we came in. The aroma was enticing, but when I lifted the container, the heft of it reminded me that there was, indeed, a dead bird inside. I begged off and waited until we got back home about an hour and fifteen minutes later. It was the bravest thing I ever did. I stayed true to my vows.
