Mother Clucker

Mark is making another great meal tonight. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's some kind of meat, and it smells great. Mark's meals can always be judged by how much of a mess he makes. Usually, if there is food dripping down the front of the cabinets, squished vegetables on the floor, and sauces splattered everywhere, it means dinner will be spectacular. Mark is a damn good cook, but even making a sandwich results in the kitchen looking like something exploded in there. That's okay, I am happy to clean up every evening, just as long as I keep getting fed.

My mom and dad had a similar arrangement, albeit only on Sundays. My dad used to make some damn good fried chicken every Sunday. The only problem was that he'd leave an awful mess that my mom would have to clean up. She says she didn't care that he left bread crumbs, and grease everywhere. She got a day off of cooking, and the chicken dinner was worth the cleanup.

I'm not sure, but I think my dad's Sunday chicken dinners got started after my dad brought home the wrong kind of chicken one Saturday. All I remember is that instead of cut up frying chickens, he had bought whole chickens. My mom is not a butcher, and either she didn't know how to cut up chickens, or after a day of dealing with us kids, she just didn't want to. It started with a few curses, "Damn, damn! If he expects me to cut these damn things up.....". The next thing I knew, my mom had a meat cleaver in her hand, and she started to whack at the chickens. Wham! "Damn son of a bi...." Wham! And a half of chicken leg went flying. Wham! "Shit, shit, shit, shit!" Wham! With each chicken part that my mom hacked up, she cursed my dad. I kind of think that at that moment, if my dad had walked in, we would have been orphans. Wham! More flying chicken parts. More cursing. Wham!

Things in the kitchen eventually got calm, and later we all sat down to a fried chicken dinner consisting of various mutilated parts. I could be wrong, but I think it might have been after this dinner that my dad became the sole person in charge of fried chicken at our house.