The Easter Chicken

THE EASTER CHICKEN

When we were little kids we often received cute little baby chickens at Easter time for a gift and I suppose as some sort of reminder about Easter.  After all, hunting for Easter eggs was such a huge deal at Easter that getting a baby chick seemed appropriate.

Time went on and the cute little chickens became big hens and roosters.  It was at this time that, for some reason, my grandfather decided that his American born grandchildren needed to learn about the ways of the Old Country.  The way that we were going to learn was that he would take our now grown pet chicken and show us how to butcher it, feather it and, voila, eat it!

Although this was quite unusual and even somewhat horrifying, of more an impact  to me that I remember was the reaction of both my grandmother and my mother. I was only about 5 or 6 and I will forever remember the two of them carrying on and berating my grandfather.  My mother was absolutely incensed that he was using her kitchen knife which wasn’t very sharp.  My grandmother was furious and was scolding him in Turkish.  I have no idea what she said but I can only imagine.  My grandmother was a feisty thing and she could really let my grandfather have it.  No doubt she was trying to stop him and was telling him he was not doing this thing properly.  Yet, as feisty as my grandmother was, my grandfather was equally as stubborn and the procedure of cutting off the chicken’s head began.  Or, I should say, the “sawing” of the chicken’s head began.

My grandfather suffered from some sort of disease that made his hands shake.  The combination of the shaky hands and the dull knife meant for a rather long, arduous and pitiful ending for this poor chicken.  Nevertheless, we dutifully paid as much attention as we could for our lesson about “the old country” though it was very hard not to be distracted by my mother and grandmother’s running about my grandfather who seemed to be oblivious to their tirades.

The next thing I remember was sitting down to dinner and eating most everything except this strange chicken wing with a few pieces of feather still stuck to it.  I seemed to have forgotten about the horror show of the morning, so when I told my sister I didn’t want the chicken she reminded me that it was the very chicken grandpa had crucified earlier.  I told my sister, “I’m so glad I didn’t eat it then!”  I’m not sure that I learned anything about the Old Country from this experience, but I think I may have gained some interesting life experiences from my grandparents.

Me with my grandpa