Church suppers etc

Church was a big part of our country life. Not only was it personal but a community together.
Have you ever tasted good fried chicken. And certainly not from the fast food resturants. First you would go out and catch the chicken, a young one about 3 months old or about 3 pounds: you could tell by feeling the leg. Next you would kill the chicken, I always liked to put a broom handle on the neck, step on both sides and pull hard and quick, then throw the chicken because the blood would splatter all over until the chicken quit protesting having it's head removed! Then you have a bucket of boiling water ready to dip the chicken in until the feathers would pull off easily. Next, you pull all the feathers and quills out and get it clean, take it into the sink to gut it and reclean the chicken. I'll spare you the gutting part. When the chicken was butchered and clean, then you rolled each piece in flour and fried it in a hot skillet of soft lard. I can still smell it cooking! Now that was fried chicken. We did not have freezers yet.

The ladies at church would almost always take fried chicken. I remember that they would be very careful of whose chicken they ate. Some people cleaned better than others. One time they even threw a chicken out because it had some pin feathers on the skin. I would hear the ladies talkng! It was best to have the ladies incharge, because one time some men got together and killed a goat, they ground up the meat, and said they were having free hamburgers. Everyone had a great time, saying it was the best hamburger. Then the men took everyone outside where they had the goat head propped up on a box like a coffin. I heard that some even lost their suppers!! Yes, the evening meal was always supper. It was just the farming way.

In the spring the water was up in the creek. Maybe even 2 foot deep in places, and the carp would come up on the ripple. Farmers around would come and shoot the carp and because I loved the water even when it was cold. I would go in and bring the fish out. My mom would fry that in flour and soft lard too. No my cholesteral has never been elevated, but neither do I eat that way anymore. The other story connected to the creek, was that it came through a town about 12 miles upstream that had a canning factory who dumped all their trash in the creek. By the time it came to our farm, the water was black and you could smell it a mile away. Yes,
Some things have changed for the better!