Going to Granny’s was always a special treat for my children so long as they could play outdoors. There were so many things they could get into. They all liked to play near or in the little creek.

Bess lived just outside of Lima, Ohio on a 5-acre plot, bisected by a drainage ditch referred to by the inhabitants as a creek. The house and yard were west of the ditch while to the east was an apple orchard. On a few days in May when the orchard bloomed the sight and smell of it were too delicious to be ignored. The gravel driveway just west of the house was flanked by a row of three or four black walnut trees. The house was a wood frame structure painted white. It had a full front porch. Bess’s flower garden lay between the house and the creek. A foot-bridge connected the back yard and the orchard.

Most of the trees in the orchard were Jonathan that ripened at the end of summer. There were however a few trees of Early Transparent that were ripe by mid-summer. These provided an early treat for kids who couldn’t wait for the Jonathans to get ripe. The Early Transparent were great for making apple sauce, easily kept frozen.

We hadn’t come to Granny’s this day on a strictly social visit. I had bought a dozen fryer-sized chickens from one of Bessie’s neighbors for our freezer. While the kids started on their exploring the grounds once again, I got ready to decapitate my chickens. I fetched the chickens from the neighbors and got ready to go to work. Ordinarily I would need an ax and a chopping block, but having neither, I armed myself with a sharp knife and Bessie’s clothes line. I also had a tub of scalding water handy.

I began the operation by hanging a chicken by its feet to the clothes line, grasping the head and slicing it off. Hanging on the line it could bleed properly without flopping all over the yard. After the headless body became still I took it off the line and dunked it into the scalding water to loosen the feathers. After plucking the bird I held it over a lit crumpled sheet of newspaper to singe the hairs off the skin. By the time I singed all of the chickens my arms had also been singed. Having prepared the naked bird I took it in to Mary who finish by removing the entrails.

Repeating the process with each chicken, plus replenishing the scalding water now and then, we had a dozen chickens ready for our freezer. I don’t remember what we did with the feathers but, having no pigs to feed, we buried the guts as far from the house as possible.

Despite their preferred activates, the children could not help notice what their daddy was doing, murdering all those beautiful chickens.

They took a dim view of it.

“Well I guess we’re done here. Let’s go home,” I said.

“Not so fast,” Bessie said, “You’ll need to eat your supper first. Anybody for fried chicken?”

Before they finished their meal all the children had forgiven their daddy of murder.