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Veteran's Day and an Etiquette Question
2002-07-09 - 12:19 p.m.
The Great Chicken Massacre
This is the second installment about our trip to the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts (if I knew how, I'd put a link here so you can go to yesterday's entry in case you missed it).
The day started out well, for the most part. I woke up, got dressed and went to the little kitchenette in the hotel for the continental breakfast. I took a step out of our nice cool hotel room and WHAM! I got hit with a CLOUD of humidity and heat. It was enough to make me think Pennsic was usually fairly cool. I waded through the wet air to the breakfast line and ate a LIGHT breakfast, bringing back some cereal and milk for my love.
He got up and dressed, ate the cereal I'd brought him and we headed for his grandmother's. We stepped out of the hotel and again we were assaulted with what could only be described as poolwater for air. It was heavy and thick, and you broke into a sweat from the exertion of talking. We got into the nice air conditioned rental car and made our way to grammys. We got to the homestead about thirty minutes later and that's when I realized that this entire soiree, which my love so lovingly calls "the Great Chicken Massacre" is OUTSIDE. I put on a nice smile and find a chair in as much shade as possible. As long as you sat perfectly still and let the bugs nibble here and there (the mosquitoes were rather hungry) you were safe and the heat wasn't too bad. We sat there and watched Uncle jimmy and Uncle Butch in the "coop" with the chickens.
The "coop" refers to the old chicken coop they used to have many many years ago. What they actually have now, is a very nice little cottage at the edge of the treeline that's main purpose is to cook chickens. It's a beautiful little cottage, with nice big windows, three refrigerators and a cinder block pit in the center that barely gives you enough room to walk around the perimeter of the little "house". I'd say the inside dimensions of this pit is something akin to 9 FEET long and about 6 feet wide.
My love's uncle Jimmy pointed to the ceiling of the "coop" and showed me the sprinkler system (well, two sprinkler system jets with no water attached... it seemed funny at the time); When Uncle Butch pointed to the sprinkler system, Uncle Jim said that they had a little problem earlier when they started the "grill" (the roof beams were scorched, reportedly, they had flames leaping up the rafters) and then I saw them.... the chickens. Each one carefully sandwiched between two grates and covered with the best herbs and sauces mankind could ever produce... and there were no less than 20 chicken halves all on the fire at the same time.
And if that wasn't enough food for about 15 people, everyone brought something. We had two different kinds of pasta salad, two different kinds of potato salad, a "normal" salad, garlic stringbeans (heavy on the garlic); boy and girl cookies; a mud pie/cake thingy, two different kinds of non-alcoholic drinks and I'm sure I'm missing another whole table full of food. It was simply just too much.. and that was for lunch.
The heat rose to 103 degrees by the time we started to eat (around 2PM); and it just made things even more unbearable. Everyone was so hot, it was just too much to eat. There were small children (one under a month old); and older adults (topping late 70s and then some); and every age in between. We ate as much as we could, then went across the street to my Love's Aunt's house (she lives in the old homestead and it has a pool). Did I mention that many of my love's aunts and uncles live within shouting distance of each other? They do. No. Really. It was really interesting. I made the observation then that in the south, when we get married, we move as far away from our parents as we can, while in the north, they appear to just move to the basement.
Time to get back to the call backs... tomorrow.... Where have all the "R"'s gone?
Please don't forget to answer my survey... it's research for a small business idea... all comments appreciated, no reasonable offer refused!!! It won't take five minutes, I PROMISE!
