RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,021
(I don't see a reason not to)
I never knew the truth of
any of this, but my mother-
in-law used to say how,
when she was a little girl
visiting her grandfather's
farm, she once witnessed
him putting a chicken on
the chopping block, a live
chicken, and, with his
axe, chopping that same
chicken's head off at
the neck; and the chicken,
headless, when wildly
running across the chicken
yard until it fell over dead.
Headless. So no noise, I'd
imagine. A real bad image
for sure, and one that was
evidently well burned in
to the little girl's memory.
She mentioned it often, as
a reason for why she never
ordered chicken. Or even
ate it. I always wanted to say,
'Why stop there?' Yet I never
did. The process is the same
for any cow, pig, chicken, or
quail, duck or lamb or goat.
Death like that is never nice;
any death is crappy, but these
are the worse. Organized now,
as they are, into industrialized,
killing-mill, centers. There's
no way you're eating happiness
when you're eating that.
-
By the 1970's, as I drove around
and through places in Pennsylvania,
Perdue and all the other chicken
mill factories had pretty much
taken over and owned the market
on all that chicken-slaughter stuff.
But across Pennsylvania, mostly
unused, you could still see the
long, low, two-tiered, mostly,
buildings that once were the
chicken coops of their day. In
probably the 1930's it all began
petering out - barnyard chickens,
farmyard chicken-slaughter, private
egg sales, all of that 'country' stuff.
The buildings were seldom used
for anything else - not like today
when everything is 're-purposed.'
These buildings just sat there,
sagging, usually and eventually
with one or another section or
part or side of them falling in.
Complete disrepair. There were
usually a few other now-useless
farm things near them too. An
old corn-crib, unused. Or even
an old, and old-style, silo, or
remnant of. Everything simply
began falling apart about that
time - all of old-America's
heritage and almost cliche'd
ideas of rural farming and
country life. Here and there
you could still find farm eggs
for sale, honey, and the rest,
but soon it was all eclipsed
by licensing, inspectors,
approvals, bacteria-level
testings, properly-controlled
buildings and environments.
We did it all to ourselves, really,
because there wasn't much wrong
with the old ways - which we
now, for some reason, like to
celebrate, and pretend about.
(I can remember once, at the far
end of my own old farm property
in Pennsylvania, when I had it,
walking the edge of the woods
and coming across some ancient
looking farm seed-spreader or
whatever they'd call it. I lifted
the flap to the long section, like
a big breadbox tray, the you filled
with seeds for the spreading over
the fields as the tractor pulled it.
When I flipped up the lid, the
thing was filled with about
30 field mice. They'd made it
their home and nest, probably
for the last ten years previous).
That Government inspection stuff
all became a part of the broad
and much larger growth of the
agencies and arms of Government,
(federal, state, and local too),
which had tentacles and claws
enough to, by now, grow to the
overwhelmingly stifling levels
that we face today - and which,
in claiming to keep us safe, only
exacerbates its own shortcomings
as a system when it does break
down. Geeks, clerks, and robotrons
of government lording it all over
things they otherwise know nothing
about can be the death of us all.
Please pass me the approved lethal
and injected toxins, OK?
-
Weird how, say, in my own
mother's case, the Government
actually took her away, as a girl,
from her home in Bayonne, because
of having rickets (not even sure
what that was myself), and then
rheumatic fever, and placed her
in some Summer rehab camp they
ran, in a place called Hibernia, NJ.
My mother talked of this often, but
she couldn't much recall the location
or how hey got there, except it was
a long bus trip. I've gone to Hibernia
a few times, just looking around, and
I can find a few spots, locations,
sites in the woods, where such a
camp might very well have been.
My mother even went up there once,
with my father's sister, my aunt, in
a car; but the two of them together
couldn't locate it either. I didn't
know about that trip until well
after. I'd have liked to be on it.
-
All things old are new again, I
guess. Fevers and death; rickets
and rheumatic fever; plagues and
diseases. It just all goes to show
how you can't tell what's ever
about to happen, until you do,
and until it does. Any moment,
an asteroid come by and say
HELLO!! - quite forcefully
too, I'm told. Might well sit
around and wait for that
eventuality too. Leastways
I don't see a reason not to.
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