Big Red would have liked this idea

A woman in Mattawa has asked the city council - twice - to allow chickens in town. I am not printing her name for fear she'll become the focus of new chicken jokes.

I don't know what her argument is. However, I would vote for her request were I on the council. I would be sure to write into the law strict owner responsibility and strict enforcement.

I know how valuable eggs can be, especially in an impoverished community. My family was an impoverished community of 10, when I was a kid, and some times all we had were eggs, mom's tasty, hot, soft, flour tortillas and a little home-made salsa.

It's hard for most people today to imagine such a life, but it happened, right in the dead of winter. Some days we had eggs for breakfast and dinner, and our school lunches had egg sandwiches.

Between 1945, when I was born, and 1957, we lived in several places in the Outlook area. No matter where we lived, we had a chicken coop of between 50-100 hens. Even in Granger, where we finally settled.

As long as we kept the chickens fed and watered and Big Red was around, we had eggs. It didn't matter so much in the summer because we ate fairly well from gleaning the fields we worked. In winter it mattered.

The eggs we didn't eat we sold. The 35-50 cents per dozen we got allowed us to buy things like bathing soap and shampoo.

To save on the cost of keeping hens we gleaned corn from snow-covered, downed stalks in fields that had been picked. Rich, Bob and I would go out with dad in our 1937 International pickup. That was cold.

Afterwards we'd sit in a circle in the kitchen shelling the kernels off those ears, with our hands, into an aluminum tub. That was painful.

Dad believed men worked and women took care of the house. So my sisters never had to pick or shell the corn. But Jenny sometimes teamed with me at feeding time.

You see, Big Red (as big as a turkey) liked chickens too, and he didn't like anyone else - chicken or human - near them. I'd take a big stick or a baseball bat and fight him while Jenny put out the feed and gathered the eggs.

I could hold Big Red off, but he was no quitter. He came after me all the time we were in that pen.

One day in '57 Uncle Bill came over to visit. Both families sat around the kitchen table, as was customary, while Uncle Bill told us he was moving his family to Ontario, Oregon.

He asked dad if he could leave a few of his fighting roosters tied to stakes in our back yard until he could return for them. Dad agreed, but Uncle Bill warned us not to let Big Red out lest one of his fighters kill him.

Rich, Bob, Jenny and I just looked at each other and smiled. When we went out to feed the chickens the next morning, all six fighters were still tied to their stakes. Dead.

Yes, Big Red would agree it's okay to keep chickens. As long as you take care of them.