Dead Chicken

I swear it was not intentional. I was heading down the creek, lovely cool morning, slanting fall light, deep blue sky. Just before the house of the fighting cocks, slowed down to a crawl, because of the damned chickens. The owner was out the door of his trailer, heading for his truck, and the chickens in the yard scattered, one launched off, heading in a low trajectory for the far side of the road, right into my grill. Dead chicken. I stopped and the good-old-boy told me to go on, wasn't my fault. I ask him what he was going to do with it and he said the other chickens would make short work of it. Thought about asking him if I could have it, because though it was a tough old rooster, it would still make a great broth; but I didn't have time to pluck and gut a chicken, and that is a chore I grew to despise back on the farm. Stinks. The rest of the drive I thought about the farm, how much I learned in Mississippi: curing meat, raising serious crops, the state of race relations in the deep south; birthed many dozens of animals, made many hundreds of gallons of beer and wine. Had our first goat dairy, bought a cream separator, and explored the threat level of ice cream that was 25% butterfat. It was a good time, and a brutal amount of work, your basic 100 work week. We had running water, finally, when Marilyn was pregnant with Samara, after seven years of hauling water from the creek. So many memories, maybe I should raise chickens again, and kill one once in a while, to remember Mississippi. What, I wonder, would it take for me to remember other places. I can't eat mussels or oysters without thinking about harvesting both of those on both the Cape and the Vineyard. For Colorado, several things. Marshalling moisture, training water in a ditch, watching rain never hit the ground; and the splendid isolation available in every direction, I always remember, when I am well and truly lost, not all that far from home. There were French frog-legs in the frozen food case where they keep strange things. Thank god there is such a place. I bought two pair of fat ones for just under four bucks. Heated a mixture of butter and olive oil in a ten-inch cast iron skillet, browned some canned, sliced, white potatoes (I watch my footprint closely, this is the way for me to buy potatoes, I eat mostly rice) on one side, and flip them, slide the frog-legs in and nestle them. I'm not adding any garlic to this, or anything else; I do, when I flip the legs, dust with salt and pepper. Sometimes simpler is better. I make a nice dipping sauce of lime juice and white balsamic with a heavy overtone of wild onions. I think it's good, but who am I to say? I'm so entrained, I couldn't really say anything, or almost anything. My precarious perch. You're the one I'm taking to the Prom.