Okay, so I can safely admit that I am lacking in the home decor gene that most women are born with. Gimme a paint brush and a sander and I can do some damage, but don't make me pick out curtains. It's not a pretty picture. I am unfortunately more at home in Lowes than I am at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. (We don't have any really nice trendy places to shop here in Lower Alabama, besides maybe Kirklands). I am about one step above trailer when it comes to stuff like that. My inner Jr. Leaguer never emerged, despite coaxing from various aunts on the subject.
Remember, I was the girl who ripped all of her dresses on the neighbor boy's Big Wheel when I was four or five. And get your heads out of the gutter, a Big Wheel was these plastic three wheeled death machines with a bar you pulled to lock the back wheels causing you to skid in a circle. Yes I was doing donuts in the street before I lost my first baby tooth.
I'm the kinda girl who can spot a classic car a mile away and tell you the make model and year. I don't know designers and really I have no interest.
So when I say I love pink flamingo lawn art it's a big admission. Makes me almost cute and cuddly. My only other claim to femalehoodness is transferware dishes, old quilts, and Raggedy Ann dolls. (And romance novels but that's a different story).
I blame my great grandmother, she had these two concrete and metal flamingos in her front yard, she also didn't really have a front yard, it was all wild flowers. She loved cereal box premiums and her garden and her chickens. She kept the ones with the fuzzy feet that looks like boots that layed blue eggs. So maybe that's why I love rooster ceramics too. I don't know. Which brings me around to my grandmother and the evil that is she. And her rooster. The one I named Satan. Grandma wasn't half as interesting. She didn't collect and has no sense of whimsy like her mother. Grandma kept the basic run of the mill chickens. And it was my job every weekend to go and gather the eggs. A job that I dearly, loathed is probably not strong enough of a word, hated, loathed, with a passion of a thousand burning suns. I'd rather try and milk the Brahman Bull (yes I know they don't give milk, work with me people) than deal with that God Damned rooster. He was mean, and he didn't like me messing with his harem, you see. And then there was the chicken shit problem but again that's another story. But after finding out the hard way how not to go about gathering eggs I had to come up with a way to get the damned fuckers. Because no matter how bad the rooster was, the grandmother was worse. She liked to get the ironing cord, and on more than one occasion I had hog brains in my scrambled eggs. So yes the rooster which wasn't much smaller than me and had huge claws and a beak and chickens will eat any damned thing, little girls included, I was sure. But I would rather face it than the evil that sent me to deal with it who was standing on the porch getting a good laugh out of a damned chicken attacking her oldest grandchild. But I digress. So I learned to take the scrap bucket (I did mention chickens will eat anything right) over to the fence and make clucking sounds to catch the roosters attention. I would hold the bucket up so he could see inside or smell or whatever it was that sent him into a frenzy, then I would slowly walk him down to the end of the yard, toss in a few tidbits, scrambled eggs were his favorite and potato peels. And then I'd haul ass to the door to the hen house, run inside, scare all the hens off their nests lure them out into the yard and fling the hell out of the contents of that bucket. Then I would run back into the house and slam the door shut. Once, I swear the rooster ran into it trying to get to me. Usually one hen wouldn't get off the nest, it was always the same one, and every weekend I had to sneak my hand under her butt and steal her future babies. She didn't put up a fight. I think she might have been depressed. Her eggs were blue. Sometimes speckled brown. I sort of liked that hen. I felt sorry for her. But her eggs wouldn't hatch so there was not point in leaving them to rot. Anyway, after that I put down corn and other feed in their bins filled their water and then got the hell out of Dodge while the rooster had forgotten about me. Chicken shit on bare feet might just be the grossest thing I've ever stepped in, though that frog comes a close second.
I have no idea why I love rooster art, maybe I'm more fond of that memory that I want to believe. I was the best damned egg gatherer of all the grand kids. Even the old biddy told me that, I took it as a compliment, then she sent me to cut okra. But that's another story.
Mercy
Oh and since it's working it's way up to Halloween I'll leave you with this.
They Stab it with Their Stealy Knives
And then eat it raw. Oh the humanity
if you like that abomination you can go here to buy it...but please don't invite me to see it, I'm sensitive.
Totally Bat Shit Crazy...it's why I love you!
ReplyDeleteI resemble that remark. ;-)
ReplyDelete