SENSE AND NONSENSE

May 29, 1975  Sense and Nonsense

Almost everyone is buying lottery tickets these days. They all believe it is their turn to win and many have special rituals they perform to influence their luck. My turn has not come because I have yet to buy a ticket. There is nothing so depressing to watch than a lottery draw on TV when one knows that not one of the tickets in the pile has their name on it. I always vow fervently to buy one before the next draw. When I do win I shall nail not only the snowshoes to the wall, but all the skates and winter boots as well – pointy sides up of course.

The only thing I can remember winning at all was an alarm clock. I was quite angry though, when it arrived in the mail. I was expecting my watch which I had left at the jewellers’ weeks before. When this large thing arrived, with no explanation whatever, I assumed they had confused things and sent me somebody’s clock and that somebody had my watch. I missed my watch dreadfully. My wrist itched and my eyes ached from glancing at the bare spot where it normally reposed. The next day my watch arrived along with the good news that the clock was the door prize for the day. My watch ticked beautifully for one week. The clock ticked for 6 1/2 years.

My husband was the lucky winner of two (live) roosters at a Halloween dance one year. They could have been the beginnings of a successful chicken ranch if we had had the facilities. As it was we lived in town and eggs were cheap at the time. Being roosters there was no way they could ever lay eggs anyway. Luckily our cousins had a small but chicken-less farm not far away and kindly volunteered to fatten them up until such time as we had occasion for a chicken dinner.

At 2:00 a.m. we deposited them in the only building which had any room for them – the pig pen. The pigs who resided there became extremely frightened and probably lost a lot of weight before the roosters left – by air. Two hours later, at daybreak, our sleeping cousins were rudely awakened by two roosters renting the quiet air with their raucous cock-a-doodling. They had flown into the attic of the house and like roosters everywhere were early risers.

For the next week the roosters continued the cycle they had started on Saturday night. They would disappear during the day and at night would fly up into the attic to roost. At 4:00 a.m. they would announce their presence to the world. The house was unfinished at the time and there was no ceiling in the bedroom. All that separated the roosters upstairs from our cousins downstairs was strips of insulation loosely tacked to the beams. There was always a danger that the roosters would fall through during their enthusiastic gymnastics which accompanied their early morning sing-songs.

Apparently one morning this was what happened. We were never told the full story and have never dared ask. Our cousin arrived at the door one morning, clothed mostly in a dark scowl, with two dead roosters in his hands. I timidly mentioned that supper would be at 6:00 that evening before he drove away. We cleaned and plucked the roosters and discovered that without their feathers, insides and cock-a-doodle-doos there was very little left. I put the remains in a pot with a lot of vegetables and boiled them the better part of the day. When our cousins arrived I added dumplings, The broth and the dumplings were delicious. The vegetables were over-done of course but the strings of what we took to be chicken were still tough.

My husband has just informed me that he has bought a lottery ticket. We are now the proud owners of a piece of paper which in three months time may be worth a quarter of a million dollars. If we do “Win the West” the first thing I would like to do is invite our cousins to another chicken dinner. This time I plan on inviting Colonel Sanders as well, providing he does the cooking and providing he brings his own chickens, dead and suitably dressed for the occasion.