Church Going Chicken

I partook of the ritual of dinner with my mommy and daddy which included special guests from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. No, we didn't have shrimp, my Grandma Ann and Aunt Tooie drove out to Wink for a visit. Grandma Ann tells some of the funniest stories and I just love listening to her anecdotes. She told one about going up to Wiggins to visit Po Po's old place, I believe a great uncle resides there now, but I can't be for sure, I haven't been down that way in about 7 years.

Seems that while she was up there, in Wiggins, a certain white chicken going through molting, scratched around on an old clay hill. Some of you may know about Mississippi red clay, well, for those of you who don't the brightly colored clay stains anything it comes into contact with. This particular white chicken without most of her feathers, was now covered in the red clay and looked a disaster. The owners told my Grandma Ann they were just gonna kill it, but she refused to let them and took the poor, wretched chicken home with her.

The pretty ugly chicken became a yard pet and followed around my Grandma Ann, I think the chicken knew she owed her life to Grandma. On Sunday, Grandma Ann walked to church, across a field and under a fence, unbeknown to her the chicken had followed her to church. The poor old ugly red clay stained missing feather thing caused a great commotion, standing outside the church doors clucking for my grandma.

That story about church then led into a discussion about all sorts of things pertaining to the bible. I don't understand why my mommy and daddy would try to convince a woman of 70 plus years that what she believes is wrong. It's really pointless, sometimes you just got to make a conscience decision to accept a person just the way they are and stop worrying about how to change them, especially if that person is up in years.

The discussion started getting heated, that's when I excused myself and went to the ladies' room. Being the clueless blonde I am, I returned bee bopping back and said, "Mom, I really like how you moved that thingy from one wall to the other wall." Of course, since I hadn't been the least bit specific she had to go and check out what I was referring to. This caused a momentary reprieve in the heated discussion.

Thinking things had calmed down, I returned to the table only to find the discussion had diverted to something about not eating meat offered up to idols. Does anybody do that anymore? Where was this happening? Really, I have no idea what brought this on, I was only gone for a few minutes. I guess, if you eat meat that's offered up to idols, but you don't ask and you don't know, then you're okay; but...if you ask and you know and you still eat the meat, then you're in BIG trouble.

They all agreed that the meat we ate tonight, turkey Mignon, had been blessed and we were all okay. Mommy said something about having ordered it from Schwans. Well, being the Bug's Bunny stinker that I am, I just couldn't help myself. With a serious tone and straight face I asked, "You do know what Schwans stands for don't ya?" "Satan's Consorts Helping Win All Nonbelievers Succulently." (it was the best I could do under pressure)