A Chicken of a Memory

My grandmother and grandfather had a chicken yard inside the city limits of Montgomery, Alabama. My grandmother used to go out into the chicken roost and say "one of you isn't laying, let's see, is it YOU? No, not you. Is it YOU? No, not you. Then it must be YOU and she'd grab the chicken and bring it outside the fenced chicken yard and with a twist of her wrist, break the neck. Then, if I was around, she'd let the headbobbing chicken loose and I'd run around trying to catch it. Then she'd grab it and hang it upside down from a wire my grandfather had strung. We'd go inside to boil a huge 'cauldron' of water while the blood ran out of the chicken through the neck. When the water was roiling, she'd turn off the stove, go get the chicken, lay the chicken on spread out paper, take the pot off the stove and then dunk the chicken into the boiling water to loosen the feathers. She'd pluck nearly all the feathers off, dunking the chicken in the water every now and then to loosen more feathers. THEN, she'd lay the chicken in the sink, roll up the newspapers and get my grandfather to take them out to the trashcan and the pot of water outside to pour the water out. I'd get on a chair that I'd pushed over to the sink and stand beside her (on her left side) and watch her finish getting the "pin feathers" off the carcass and then slit the belly and pull the innards out. And I always remember that she ALWAYS got a handful of "eggs" (pre-shelled yellow balls) out of every chicken she ever chose for our dinner. Everyone was laying, she just used that as an excuse to kill a chicken for our dinner.