A CHICKEN WITH ITS HEAD CUT OFF

If I have to have a picture of a chicken with its head cut off, I'll go for for this colorful one by Barbara Ann Gomez. I do wonder what the inspiration was for her to draw it.

September is a big month for foodie celebrations. There are more celebrations than there are days of the month From Pickles to Popsicles, from Guacamole to Linguini, September is a feast.

We’ve been planning ahead at the community magazine, and we’ll celebrate with several food-related articles, plus a compendium of food memories from some of our staff members.  One gal wrote about not wanting to eat chicken after she saw her grandmother cut the head off one, and saw what was to be her Sunday dinner running around. Another writer’s mother also killed chickens, but she hung them up by their legs on a line. Then she cut the head off. Easier to drain the blood, of course.

Getting a picture of those events in my mind’s eye, I remembered that I too know firsthand what it looks like to see a chicken running around with its head cut off.

When I was around 10, maybe younger, living in a development on suburban Long Island, one of our neighbors bought a mess of baby chicks. There must have been several dozen. They kept them up in their attic, and I remember going up there to see the cute, fuzzy things. This was, as I recall, a lovely but strange family. There were, I think, four or five kids. They really should have been living in a rural area, not in small house on a morsel of an acre, and I remember the house as, shall we say, not being as nice, neat, and clean as where I lived.

Well, the fuzzy chicks, grew. The dad built a coop out in the backyard. The neighbors on each side mustn't have been too happy about it, but...  I know there were complaints about the dirt and smells, but the adults had to deal with that. I thought the chickens were great. One time, it must have been time for a family meal, and I remember the dad killing a few by running their necks under the blades of an upturned reel lawn mower. And then chickens really did run around with their heads cut off. 

Of course, I must have told my mother. What she did about it, what the other mothers did about it, (there were several of us kids there) I don’t know. I know I never saw that again. But once was enough for me to remember. This New York City-born kid still thinks it was cool.