ChickenMom said:
Do tell.....I like stories
Although it may not be the same, exactly, it sure feels the same for some reason... I hope you enjoy.
Wing
Chicken House Blues
Although my Grandfather was not what you could call, a "Serious drinker," he had lived through both the Depression and Prohibition. He told stories of both, and sometimes it was difficult to remember which one he was preaching against the hardest. Now, our farm had been in the family since before the Revolutionary War and there was nothing that wouldn't be done to keep it. Shades of gray and the law had both been important factors in keeping the farm from tax collectors or wealthy folks that wanted all the farmland they could buy, borrow or steal. Grandpa had been asked to sell the place many times over the years, as there was well over two thousand tillable acres involved, but had always refused, no matter the offer or threat. Later on in his life, the stories had come out among the immediate family, who were told, "It was the families business and nobody else's," regarding the ways he had held on to the place.
One day, when I was quite young, my grandfather and I went to the second hen house, in the third row of these structures. There were four roosters posted in here and I thought it was a terrible waste of space. But the important thing was that Grandpa wanted it this way, so there were never any questions asked. As we stepped in the door Grandpa grabbed one of the birds as we went by and told me to hold on to it. We walked over to the baby Franklin stove (each house had one of sorts) and he proceeded to move it, fire blocks and all, back towards the wall and with very little effort. There was a hole in the floor about three feet square. We climbed down the ladder to a room about twenty-foot square that was full of copper tubing and mason jars, gallon jugs and barrels. Grandpa took the bird from me, tied it to the ladder, and then lit a gas burner under one of the steel barrels.
Grandpa did some "moon shining" to make ends meet, and although it was risky, it was needed for one reason or another. There were a number of folks that knew where to get their âshineâ in the county, but nobody knew exactly or really cared about how Grandpa got it. For over fifty years, Grandpa had sold his wares to the town Marshall and the Sheriff's department, not to mention the mayor, a number of state officials and even a judge or two.
One day, Grandpa came running up from the chicken yard yelling at the top of his voice,
"The chicken died! The chicken died!"
To watch Grandpa run was excitement in itself! He ran with an old and twisted, oak root cane, instead of wearing his artificial leg. With Grandpa at a dead run, the entire family knew it was time to run or hit the deck and many of us did both! The explosion blew the walls into splinters and the roof plumb off the henhouse! The roof went up about forty or so feet and then landed in the backyard! We found out later, the explosion had been heard over a ten-mile radius of the farm, and after we put out the fire, the county Sheriff showed up and asked what all the noise was about. Grandpa had caught the Sheriff at the front gate and told him we were blowing stumps. Tongue in cheek, the Sheriff left, but as he did, there was a somewhat cockeyed grin on his face.
As a family, our secret was safe, but there was a neighbor over that day helping with the butchering of a steer and a couple of hogs. In those days we had party lines with up to six different farms on each line. You answered your calls by a code⦠two short and one long ring, a long and a short ring, etc. With our neighbor calling his wife to tell her he was okay, it didn't take long for the entire county to know the specifics of the incident. As soon as the fire was out and he got a chance, he called home and told of what happened. Knowing the wires "had ears," nobody in the family would talk on the phone about family business, but after the call home by our neighbor, the neighbors had a lot to say for a spell.
Needless to say, no one, including the county officials, had any good "corn-squeezens" for almost three months, which is about how long it took for production to resume. Although it wasn't quite legal, there was never anyone that got in any trouble over it. As a matter of fact, one of the judges that would come over and sit on the back porch and chew the fat almost every Saturday night, said the folks that the law wanted, were the oneâs making the 'shine' by the truck load, but what Grandpa was doing was considered more along the lines of a "community service."
