One day this past week, as the bitter wind sent freshly-fallen snow swirling across our open fields and pastures, I read a message that all local schools were closed due to extreme winter weather. The thermometer read 8 F.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and looked out toward the west. I saw a tiny dot crest the hill to the southwest. I soon realized it was our young Amish neighbor girl, Emma, walking across our back field on her way to school. The whipping wind lifted her black cloak, her solitary figure against the white landscape painting a picture I won’t soon forget. She still had quite a long way to go.
While most children were granted the day off of school, Emma set out on an hour-long trek, just as many of our parents and grandparents would have done.
This made me think of the various stories Ashland County, Ohio, native Cloyd McNaull, 94, has shared, and how things he did during his childhood would seem so foreign to children of that same age in today’s world.
Cloyd McNaull compiled a wonderful collection of stories for his great-grandson, Xander McNaull Tobias, who requested of his great-grandfather “more stories — not presents, just stories,” during the Christmas 2022 season.
Though penned for his great-grandson, some of us have been lucky enough to land a copy of our own. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading his accounts of farm life as a boy in the 1930s and 1940s.
One that stood out in the vast difference of today’s children is the story of Sunday dinner.
“On Friday nights, Mom would have me go to the chicken house to catch a rooster. It would be dark, and all the chickens and roosters were up on the roosting rack sleeping. I would put my flashlight on a rooster, and use a long wire with a hook on the end to catch his leg. Then I would place him in a box in the feed room. Saturday afternoon, Mom had a chopping block by the garage and would place the rooster’s neck on the block. She would then take her hatchet and chop off his head. She would drop the rooster to the ground where he would flop around for a short while.”
“Next she put him into a bucket of boiling water. I would help her pluck off the feathers. She then took the rooster into the house and butchered him.”
“For Sunday dinner, Mom always had chicken (the rooster), noodles, mashed potatoes, gravy, apple sauce and a large fruit pie,” he noted in his stories.
I’m sure that my young grandson, 8 years old, would find this whole process impossible to imagine, though I would guess that Cloyd wasn’t much older than this when he helped start the Sunday meal each Friday night.
It was about a year ago that my little granddaughter, age 5, while enjoying chicken tenders for lunch, posed the question, “What are chicken tenders made of?”
Because she is extremely choosy about what she eats, I stopped myself from giving a straight answer. “I think they are made of everything you like!” was my quick reply. “I think you are exactly right!” she said with a big grin, as she dipped that breaded chicken into her favorite ranch dressing and enjoyed a big bite.
If she had helped catch this lunch with a hooked wire, oh, what a different story this would be!
