<p> Howdy, Folks...</p>
<p>Beware. I got a store-bought chicken today.</p>
<p>I was hongry (yeh, that's how we spell it and say it when we're starving) so I headed up to the local Red and White grocery store. Although the store hasn't been an official "Red and White" for more'n a decade that's what it used to be called so most of us still call it that. The "new" owners, owning it for 15 years now, just call it the Efland Supermarket.</p>
<p>I wasn't sure what I wanted for supper so I roamed the produce aisle, the mini dairy shelves, the smoked ham hock section complete with salted fat back, turkey necks and wings, bacon, even block cheese and then rounded the turn to the meat department. </p>
<p>Now, lookee here, I've walked that meat department many times, up and down the aisle, comparing prices, cuts of meat, judging the ratio of fat to bone, meat to bone, bone to bone, best deal of pork vs chicken, price per pound and how much price is going to pound of fat or bone. Whew, in my early days it was enough to cause total befuddlement. Now a days it's a fine art and I have it down pat.</p>
<p>But today, there I was, studying the situation at hand when, when....my heart spoke to my mind. There it was, a chicken, but not just any chicken. This was a rare chicken, unlike any I'd ever seen in a grocery store.</p>
<p>It was marked "discount" but I could tell it had more value than that. There it lay right next to the non-discount chickens. It was one of a kind, no doubt. I studied the situation some more. It was a whole chicken, not a package of a cut up chicken. This was a whole chicken, complete with the party pack stuffed up its butt. You know those little white packs that contain a gizzard, a neck, a liver, etc? I call them "party packs" cus it's fun to open it up when you get home and see what you've won. A good party pack even has a chicken heart included; sometimes there'll be two gizzards! </p>
<p>Even though it was a discount chicken I didn’t mind. I just had to have that chicken. Besides, I got to thinkin' I was doing that chicken a good thing, doing my part for cosmic justice. I almost felt bad for that dead discount chicken, lying there under plastic, probably feeling humiliated. Ya see, I noticed it was discounted cus it only had one leg….</p>
<p>The way I figger it, as I stood there looking down at the selections in the meat counter, that po’ chicken suffered enuff in its life, what with only one leg and all. For some reason I had a chicken-brain flashback and pictured it ranging around the chicken pens during the day, hopping along on one leg like a pogo stick. In the evening it would go to its night time perch in the chicken coop, hanging on for dear life with only 4 toes to work with instead of the usual 8. And now here it was, standing out above all others in its afterlife, all laid up in a grocery store display counter on a Styrofoam bed, covered with a cellophane blanket. Cold.... Dead.... Discounted.</p>
<p>To top it off, as if the above-described situation wasn’t bad enough, it had a bright orange sticker on it stating “reduced”, as if declaring it was “not quite as good as the two-legged chickens on each side that are pulling in a premium price”!</p>
<p>But ya know what? As I said, I just had to buy that one-legged discount chicken. I took it home, brined it, seasoned it to perfection, cooked it up right proper and enjoyed every bit of it! That chicken served my purpose just fine.</p>
<p>Purpose? Hmm, my head's a'thinkin'...</p>
<p>As I sit here wondering, I wonder if in the grand scheme of things does the chicken finally feel it has served a wonderful purpose? Does it feel it has finally gotten proper acknowledgement for its lifes journey? Does it feel like it’s contributed to the grand scheme of things in a positive way and, like so many of us, by doing so now feels whole? :>)</p>
<p>Jus’ wonderin’...</p>
<p>Think I'll go do some good for someone. I bet it'll help me out as well as the someone I'm helping. Heck, might even help me feel whole, like that chicken. Besides, my left leg has had me limping lately, almost hopping, kinda like, like, well, let's not go there....</p>
<p>Shoe, signing off. <em>*burp.</em> (Oh, ‘scuse me….) ô¿ô</p>
Discussions:
| Thread Title | Last Reply | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Awwwwwwww by vic | Sep 17, 2011 9:24 PM | 10 |
Post a new thread about this blog entry:
