A chicken tale...

This is a story about chicken. It has nothing to do with the coming nuclear holocaust with Iran. If anything, it has to do with the nature of children. We [the USA] will fail, and the UN [as usual] will fail. Meanwhile, strong memories will sustain us.

The cult of the War of Northern Aggression is quite strong. Some of us never surrendered, and like the Confederates who sought refuge in Mexico, we never saw a good reason to give up.

130 years later, we still re-fight the war. We give ground where history says we lost; I am fond of asking those who question the veracity of re-enactments: who really lost? The slaves were freed, and most went where? What did you Yankees do for them, besides provide ghettos, slave labor without the perks of the Southern “Massas”, and a vague promise of freedom that failed until the 1950s?

In the 1990s, trying to pay for gas and be on my way, I was jacked up by a clerk from Chicago who should have known better. He asked the wrong question: don’t you know you lost?

My reply was similar to the above paragraph, but much more caustic and profane. The upshot was the same; where did the slaves go when they were freed? I like black people, and agree with Bill Cosby; where are you going to go once the Democrats release you from the plantation? Our Confederate brothers never acted as badly.

The slaves went north, aside from the handful of free men who fought for the Confederacy [a black fact; look it up. Black people are as free as my fine aristocratic white self, and always have been]. Bill Cosby is right-on; do you have a problem with self-responsibility?

Ahh, but this is about chicken.

Re-enactors are a definite hard-core cult. Only the renowned writer Elmore Leonard has dared to touch upon us; my own idea for a murder mystery novel was discouraged upon inception. A re-enactor would never load a live round and fire it on the field.

Those of us who belong to the hard-core cult of re-enacting camp “authentic”. This is opposed to them what camp in cozy trailers, mobile homes, and recreational vehicles. No offense; they have wives, children, etc. who cannot sleep on the ground under a drooling picket line of horses. RVs are forgiven, if they are hidden.

Those of us who can pitch an authentic camp are frequently called upon to give “living history” as to the time and circumstance of the camp. We try to follow history, and anachronisms like sleeping bags and plastic coolers are carefully concealed.

So, to the chicken anecdote:

‘Way back when, we were doing the Battle of Resaca. [Look it up; it’s in your history books; at least those not re-written for politcal correctness.]

It was a Saturday evening: the day’s tactical battles against the Yankees had been ridden; we weren’t going to rob trains, so it was camp time; the horses were on the picket line, and we had the glorious moment of peace that makes all the cultism of reenactment worthwhile. My best description: there comes a personal moment when the present ceases to exist, and for that one instant, you are living the moment. Immediate time fades away, and even the time compression of CQC [Close Quarters Combat] becomes an abstraction. We don’t have time machines, but it is a perfect moment. It is for what re-enactors live for. We don’t chase lost causes; we chase that perfect moment.

So, the day’s battles are done. We have pitched camp, and chase the perfect moment through other means. We call this “living history”. We camp rough, as our ancestors did, and we invite tourists to tour the camp sites and hear the lectures.

One of the riders with the 43d Virginia Partisan Rangers was a fellow named Stan. (We’ll call him that, since it’s his name.) Despite being a Georgia boy by birth and a South Carolinian by heritage, I owe my Confederate heritage to John Singleton Mosby, the “Gray Ghost” of the 43d Virginia cavalry. My great-granddaddy went north, and rode with him to the end. My cavalry was grouped at the tent.

Stan had pet chickens, and brought them along to battle. He would keep them on leg “lead lines”; leather shoe strings attached to a stake near the campfire. To illustrate the concept of living off the land, Stan would occasionally sling the chickens and a small iron skillet off his saddle. No harm was done; we care for our critters.

Having done the day’s battles, we are resting around the campfire.

At this moment, a woman tourist with her eight- or nine-year old daughter wanders through. Having seen the battles of that day, the child immediately inquires about the staked chickens: “What’s going to happen to them?”

We smiled, and someone said “They’re supper.” Mom quickly led her kidlet off to see the rest of the Confederate camp.

In the interim, we coughed up cash for some real food. Roger H. went into town, and bought a bucket of Col. Sander’s finest. Stan put his chickens under a steel milk crate frame, behind the large 43d A-frame tent. Please remember that these are pet chickens, and afforded the same care and considerations as our horses and dogs, i.e. they are well fed and cared for beyond our meager human requirements. We put the non-authentic gear like sleeping bags and ice coolers out of sight, so Stan’s chickens were resting comfortably in a steel milk carton behind the tent, fed, watered, and clucking themselves to sleep.

No one thought twice of our concession to dinner. We raked the chicken and cole slaw onto our pewter plates, and began chowing down.

At that moment, the lady and her child returned from their tour of the camp. Seeing us feasting on fried chicken parts, the child went ballistic. Stan, a family man with daughters of his own, had to go to great extremes to calm the young lady. He took her out back of the tent and showed her that the pet chickens were in fact comfortable, untouched, and quite merry.

That was a strange day

There is no point to this story, aside from begging the question: where do you think fried chicken comes from? I suppose there might be an analogy with the Holy Communion, but that’s reaching.

Before I joined the Army in the early ‘70s, I worked my high school summers in the Central Soya chicken plant. To this day, 30+ years later, I cannot handle raw chicken. I still remember the first task: steam-cleaning the “blood tunnel”. “If you can do this, you can do anything.”

I hope that little girl is all right. No harm came to animals. Even the actors survived in those days.

Stan’s pet chickens lasted into the fullness of their days. Inspired by mine, they attended many a reenactment. No actors were harmed in the composing of this post.