Connie Cook Smith: The City Boy and the Village Chicken
It was a cool autumn afternoon in the village of Glasford, Illinois, so Grandma Bitner didn't mind turning on the oven to bake her homemade cornbread to go with the ham hocks and beans she was cooking.
When she heard a soft knock on the front porch door, she debated whether to just call out, "Come in!" or go to the door and see if it might be a stranger, which was more likely in this neighbor-friendly little town.
The knocking occurred again, so now very curious, she headed for the door through the dining room, living room, and enclosed front porch. A stranger indeed. There she saw a fairly young man with an apparently heavy satchel, and even though she suspected a salesman, she greeted
him at the door.
He asked her if she might be interested in seeing some samples of the World Book Encyclopedias. Indeed she would.
Growing up on the farm, it seemed there was never any time to read anything besides some Bible passages. But she knew about World Books from a wealthier family she sometimes visited. When she and her classmate Sarah would sometimes ponder bigger questions than were addressed in school, Sarah would enthusiastically exclaim, "Let's go look it up in the World Books!"
Sarah and Grace (later my Grandma Bitner) remained life-long friends, partially due to these somewhat "forbidden" excursions into knowledge that elementary school children generally could
not access. Their discovery of the many different religions in the world seemed the most astonishing knowledge of all!
Sarah and Grace had met each other and become friends in Sunday School at the First Baptist Church, which to them, of course, was the one and only way to know about God. They did
question their Sunday School teacher about what they had read in the World Books and Mrs. Watson firmly explained to the girls, "That's why our church takes up collections for Missionaries, to give them enough support to go out into the world and tell them the Truth."
Okay, that made sense. All they had to do was show the Bible and talk to people in other lands -- sometimes even in America! -- in order to set them straight. No problem.
Many other topics in the World Books were not so startling, but they certainly were very interesting. But for Grace, excursions into knowledge about "the world" -- except from the occasional newspaper that reached the farm, and later on, the radio -- any extensive reading or studying got replaced by the absolute necessities of milking cows, tending chickens, doing the washing, and cooking for her husband and four children and sometimes quite a crew of farmhands during harvest times. Her fling with knowledge of "the world" was over, replaced by the more important here-and-now matters of an actually good life on the farm that had been left
to her and husband Earl by her father.
When the farm house burned down one evening in 1939 when no one was home, relatives in Kingston Mines were able to provide them a furnished house to help them start to recover. Meanwhile, they were offered a good price for the farm and its resources.
With Grace and Earl getting into their 50's, and knowing there was a family property coming available in Glasford, it would feel like a great relief to move into town, into that nearby village.
There was a grocery store and hardware store, an ever-interesting local newspaper The Glasford Gazette, an auto shop, a doctor's office, the luxury of a cafe, a fabric store that featured a line of ready-made dresses and hats. Also on Main Street there was a little sundries shop that provided everything needed for sewing, knitting, crocheting -- as well as story books and a few toys for the grandchildren. What a nearly luxurious new way of life all that would be!
However, Grace would not hear of leaving behind her prize flock of Rhode Island Red laying hens and rooster, "Old Bill." Many households in town had chickens in their backyards. A visitor once jokingly called Glasford,"Eggford."
Even with one of the old hens apparently going into dementia, Grace would not leave her behind -- with a cousin naming the extremely fussy chicken HENrietta.
And so we return to Grandma Grace and the World Book salesman conversing on the front porch of the house in Glasford. Gran noticed how weary the young man looked and felt compassion for his difficult door-to-door sales job. Also, she nearly salivated at the prospect of owning her very own set of World Books in this phase of her life when she had some time to read them!
And besides, maybe her grandchildren would become successful educators such as Sarah had become. The two old friends secretly envied each other's lives. Sarah had intellectual status and independent income, but still, she was referred to as "an old maid." Grace had had home and
husband and family and a prosperous farm and all the respectability that life back then accorded such a lifestyle.
But now, Grace wanted World Books! She invited Mr. Cody in and settled him in the living room with a hot cup of sweet tea. She told him to feel free to remove the centerpiece on the coffee table and the large doily she had made, in order for him to display some sample wares.
It would still be awhile before daughter and husband and their two girls came home for dinner. The beans were cooking themselves, the cornbread batter was ready for the oven.
But earlier, Gran had laid out an old white tablecloth on the dinner table in order to cut it into cleaning rags."Waste not, want not" dominated housewives' minds, in those days. Husband Earl soon struggled in the back door. Struggled, because HENrietta was in a mood and pecked him rather ferociously in order to enter the house with him. Grace called out, "Oh, just let her in, Earl. I will handle her."
Not so fast, HENrietta apparently thought, and headed straight for Grace standing at the stove. After one or two pecks on Gran's legs that ruined her hosiery, she picked up the old white tablecloth and draped it full-length over the demented hen. There was a moment of silence, a very short moment. Suddenly, HENrietta began doing what all chickens do when they are agitated. The old girl began flapping furiously under the discarded white tablecloth. Then screeching, squawking, screaming, and with some strange sense of unerring direction, proceeded into the dining room and through the doorway into the living room, where the weary Mr. Cody was
still savoring his tea and resting his feet on the ottoman in front of the easy chair where he'd felt his first physical comfort all day.
But here it came! As a born-and-bred city boy, Mr. Cody never before had heard a hysterical chicken, nor had he ever seen -- especially in the deepening autumn darkness of the living room -- never had he seen or heard some sort of white shroud partially airborne and partially bouncing
and screeching around any room at any time. Soon Grace raced in to rescue him from this phantasmagoric sight.
But grabbing the tablecloth off the beast did not soothe HENrietta's soul. Ah-hah! An all new target to attack. Flapping furiously, the enraged old chicken landed on Mr. Cody's outstretched legs and promptly downloaded a large splash of chicken poop on his good pants. Oh, no! The pants to his
only good suit that he had for making sales calls.
It momentarily flitted across Grace's mind that maybe HENrietta wasn't senile after all. Perhaps she was just constipated. Well, no matter, time to tend to poor aggrieved Mr. Cody. By this time Earl had entered the room and turned on some lights. Immediately sizing up Mr. Cody's plight -- and not having a dry cleaner in town, Earl left and soon returned with quite a handsome suit. He explained that their eldest son had married and moved away, but this left-behind suit looked just about right for Mr. Cody's build.And it was!
Fortunately, daughter and son-in-law had come home and entered the back door into the kitchen and rescued the cornbread from burning. The beans had boiled over a little, but actually no harm done.
Apparently suddenly quite relieved, HENrietta settled down on Mr. Cody' s lap and proceeded
with her chicken version of snoring -- or perhaps purring -- a kind of chirping-whimpering sound.
After Mr. Cody got cleaned up as much as possible, he was pleased to join the family for dinner.
HENrietta had been peacefully carried out to join herflock in the backyard. It was possible to imagine her clucking to her flock-friends, "Girls, you won't BELIEVE the day I just had!"
After dinner, the rest of the evening was spent by the family browsing through the sample World Books that Mr. Cody had managed to carry around. And -- Ka-ching! -- the sale was made. It would be a payment schedule of course.
Beaming with pride in his sharp new suit, Mr. Cody began the short walk to his rooming house. A tiny moment of terror occurred as he left, when HENrietta came trotting up to him at the side of the house. But he felt so good from the outcome of this evening that with ease he reached down to
pet the old girl. She allowed it with an apparently appreciative little squawk. DSS
Connie Cook Smith, of Canton, IL. is a retired journalist and lecturer on "little known history."
A village chicken with dementia? Well, maybe. To keep these good stories coming, donate here to Downstate Story.