Tuesday, September 03, 2013

3762 Chicken Farmers

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; 
if you really make them think, they'll hate you."
--Don Marquis--

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Am I the only person who thinks it's hypocritical that folks get all huffy when someone uses "retarded" to mean stupid, but no one blinks twice at the same use of the word "dumb"?

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This is cool:  a series of concrete arrows ten miles apart crossing the continent from New York to San Fransisco!   They were used to guide mail planes across the country in the days before guidance systems.  If I were younger and had an ATV, or a horse, and liked to camp out, I'd want to follow this trail before it completely disappears.  It's more interesting to me and less depressing than the fabled route 66.

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When I was very small we lived a few places in the south, like Fort Bragg, and Biloxi.  One time when I was maybe five years old, there was a holiday parade, and mixed in with the thrilling bands and floats there was a bunch of boring people in ghost costumes.  For some reason my mother got all tense and upset and muttered that they shouldn't be allowed.  I agreed, because they were boring, but so were the boys with the shoulder bands covered with badges, and the women in aprons, so I asked why they were worse and shouldn't be allowed.

Mom said they were the coo clucks clan, that they were fowl people, they kill people they don't like, and I should stay away from them.

I was shocked that chicken farmers would kill you. Why were they different from cow farmers and corn farmers?

For several years after I felt very brave eating chicken, because what if the farmer didn't like me and the chicken was poisoned?  To this day, 60+ years later, when anyone mentions the KKK, my first thought is of pigeons and chickens.
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3 comments:

Becs said...

My Polish step-grandmother-in-law called them "The Koo Koo Klan."

rockygrace said...

Oh, I love the chicken story.

Anonymous said...

My great grandpappy was some grand poohbah in the klan. It was quite the thing here in the day. Don't hear much about it or anything at all really at least around these parts.

Z