Porter Gulch Mayhem
The widow, Mrs. Hudson and the slaughter of 1959 - 🌿from the Archive
Mrs. Hudson, at the age of 70, was cooking up a huge pot of cornmeal mush on the cast-iron wood stove as she did every morning to feed the legion of feral cats that gathered around her back door at the break of day. They were always so starved they’d have been glad to eat plain mush, but she liked to stir in a 20¢ can of jack mackerel, which humans find repulsively odoriferous, but it’s ambrosia to a cat. She said the oil in it kept them from getting mange. She could have been right, I guess. She had homemade preventives and cures for a lot of different ailments – both human and feline.
On her way out to the hen house to gather the eggs and feed the baby chicks this bright morning, she glanced over at the barn and saw the white gander tearing around the corner at full speed. He was the biggest and meanest damn goose ever hatched. His head was bent low to the ground, his wings were flapping and he was running straight at her like some kind of Anserine missile. “Aw, for Pete’s sake,” she growled. She’d had about enough of that bird. Last week he’d caught her leg in his steel-trap of a beak and would not let go. Left a big bruise on her calf and a big hole in her lisle stocking.
The gander sprang at her, flogging her hips with his large wings and honking like a fiend. She caught him by the neck in her right hand. Now, this was a big bird, nearly 12 pounds, I’d say, but she was so fed up, she lifted him up and swung him around her head three times like a maniac rope-twirling cowboy and snapped its neck.
She dropped the dead bird in the grass with satisfaction. “Good. That’s done then,” she muttered with no remorse. She headed over to the chopping block, dragging the heavy ex-goose behind her. “Guess we’ll jest have our Easter dinner a bit early this year.”
Ms. Hudson was my grandmother down in Porter Gulch in Santa Cruz County, California and she was a holy terror. I didn’t like her much when I was little - she was always threatening us kids with a “switchin” if we didn’t “pipe down”. but from the perspective that age gives us, I’d adore the old gal now. She’s been dead for many years, but she’s not forgotten by her grandchildren.
"Pipe down"! I haven't heard that one for a while...
Good visual! I remember when I was a child witnessing the "passing away" of a farm chicken. Not sure I'd have been a good farm girl... While grocery shopping for chicken now, I have to pay extra for the already cut up style as I nearly made myself sick when, in college years ago, I tried to save a few pennies by buying one whole and I couldn't stomach the necessary cutlery involved.