Baby chicks came with the stirrings of spring. Sometimes Ez Lewis, the mailman, brought them, having to drive up to the house to deliver them, and sometimes Mother had to pick them up at the tiny Garland post office with Jo Bob Cubbage in charge. Can you imagine being the mailman on delivery day, and having to drive about the country side with boxes of baby chicks making all the peeping noise that they did - or being in that tiny post office with boxes of baby chicks. The mystery to me is the question of where Mother ordered them from. Montgomery Ward? Does anyone know? All I remember is that the little black chicken house had to be heated, and Mother carefully kept the bottles of water full, and plenty of feed so the chicks could grow. The rounded thin board kept the chicks together and the heat in near the floor. We loved the fluffy, yellow babies, and were allowed to hold one now and then. As the chicks grew into pullets, some were winnowed out for meat and butchered and bottled, and some were allowed to grow big to become the layers for the year. I remember that when we lived in Ralston, we had one hen who escaped the hen house, and produced her own little band of babies, who followed her around the yard in single file as she paraded them for our appreciation. And one year in Penrose, the chicks began to sicken and die - Mother pursued the cause, and determined that it was the Pip - an acronym that eludes memory as to the full name of the disease, but remains a family word for anyone who is sick of an undetermined cause. We've all had the PIP now and then.
Baby chicks came with the stirrings of spring. Sometimes Ez Lewis, the mailman, brought them, having to drive up to the house to deliver them, and sometimes Mother had to pick them up at the tiny Garland post office with Jo Bob Cubbage in charge. Can you imagine being the mailman on delivery day, and having to drive about the country side with boxes of baby chicks making all the peeping noise that they did - or being in that tiny post office with boxes of baby chicks. The mystery to me is the question of where Mother ordered them from. Montgomery Ward? Does anyone know? All I remember is that the little black chicken house had to be heated, and Mother carefully kept the bottles of water full, and plenty of feed so the chicks could grow. The rounded thin board kept the chicks together and the heat in near the floor. We loved the fluffy, yellow babies, and were allowed to hold one now and then. As the chicks grew into pullets, some were winnowed out for meat and butchered and bottled, and some were allowed to grow big to become the layers for the year. I remember that when we lived in Ralston, we had one hen who escaped the hen house, and produced her own little band of babies, who followed her around the yard in single file as she paraded them for our appreciation. And one year in Penrose, the chicks began to sicken and die - Mother pursued the cause, and determined that it was the Pip - an acronym that eludes memory as to the full name of the disease, but remains a family word for anyone who is sick of an undetermined cause. We've all had the PIP now and then.
