Killing chickens

It ain't no chicken but it is a turkey and you can fry them just as well

There are so many things that you do when you grow up in the country that today's kids never experience like killing chickens.  Somebody has to do it.

Every year we raised chickens for eating and chickens for laying eggs.  Now quite often we would harvest (kill) a chicken for lunch or dinner.  By the way let’s fix that!  We never had lunch and dinner.  We had Dinner and Supper.  Anyway mom made the best fried chicken you can imagine.  It was fried in Crisco and served hot with some salt on it.  Now I know everyone says fried foods will kill you and especially with fat like Crisco but there is no better eat'n than that.

This especially becomes worthy of discussion when you consider New York City is trying to limit POP to 16 oz. or less to cut down on obesity.  In fact now Congress and everyone else in government plus a bunch of  groups want to dictate what a person can eat.  Next thing you know we are gonna have FAT COPS.  Now I don't mean cops that are fat.  I mean cops that give tickets to folks for being fat.  OK back to the point.  Instead of regulating what folks eat why don't we regulate how much time folks don't work or sit on their butts?  I personally sit in an office most of the day when what I should do is stand to do my work.  I would be less sedentary and my muscles would not get as lazy or weak.  Why don't we just legislate NO CHAIRS?  We could legislate that folks can only watch TV standing and that would include when they are on the phone or playing a video game.  Why don't we make everyone park a long ways from the front door of Wal-Mart so they have to walk?  Now doesn't this all seem absurd?  Sure it does.  The heart of the problem is not soda drinking kids or donnut eating cops or fried chicken or business people who sit all day.  The problem is discipline and focus and too much tempting opportunities to be excessive in our consumption (food and non-food).

Why don't we emphasize discipline again?  Why don't we stop trying to socialize everything and get back to incentives?  How about a penalty for being overweight?  I would be penalized so I am speaking about me.  How about penalizing parents who don't teach their children the right way to eat?  Why don't we get more lawyers educated to suit folks who own businesses who feed you food you eat too much of?  Absurd!  All this is absurd.  Let's use common sense.  Such a novel idea.

By the way if fried chicken is what kills folks and POP then my dad should have lived longer than age 87 and my granddad should have died long after 85 and my Grandma Annie would have lived longer than 90 and the list goes on and on.  Or how about Bill Sorter who died at 103 years of age and ate eggs and red meat everyday or his wife who died when she was in her late 90's who ate bad.  Oh ya, Mom! Opal Olson is 84 and walks five miles a day, YES 5 miles a day and she can sass you and think of more things to do than anyone I know.  So if eggs and red meat kills what went wrong?  The fact is nothing went wrong.  What was right is that the government stayed out of their kitchen and they WORKED HARD and tried to live a good life doing good things helping folks who needed help.  They did not exercise daily they worked daily.  They gardened and fed cattle, milked cows, canned vegetables, slopped the hogs, cleaned their house, drove the tractor and they got up early every morning and worked long days.

Today besides walking five miles a day Mom buys STUFF (if you would like a list let me know) and then she at her expense packages the stuff up and sends it to soldiers serving our country overseas.  She gives and gives until she can give no more then she gives some more.  I love my mom and what she stands for.

Well this story was gonna be about killing chickens but it turned into something else.  I will tell you about the annual or semi-annual chicken killing day next time.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Eat'n fat won't kill you but sitting on your butt might
• Hard work cures a lot of what ails you
• Common sense would make us all healthier
• I need to lose 40 pounds

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com