Johnny was one of the service advisors at the car dealership
where I worked.
Johnny grew up in the Florida panhandle on the coast of The
Gulf of Mexico, had his family there, made his home there. Johnny had been a bar bouncer, sheriff’s
deputy and an ace car mechanic. He got
tired of running his own shop and decided to work at the dealership.
Johnny spent a lot of time dodging the eyes of the service
manager, spending a lot of time in back with the mechanics, shooting the breeze
with customers because he knew a lot of people who came in and generally trying
not to do anything close to work.
“I’ve got a chicken story for ya,” Johnny said one slow
Friday afternoon.
I had been at the dealership for a few weeks, I guess I had
earned credit with Johnny as someone he could shoot the breeze with.
“This was right after I was out of high school,” Johnny went
on. “The old man said I couldn’t live in
the house anymore so me and three other guys went in on a double-wide mobile
home down near Perdido Key. That was
before all the condos came in and shit.
We could rent this double-wide and all the rats and squirrels we could
eat for $250 a month.
“Anyway, one of the guys rode a motorcycle everywhere and
was always collecting chickens. He’d
come riding up from work on his scoot holding a sack and he’d open it up and
out popped a chicken.
"Soon we had this whole flock of chickens running around our
double-wide. We didn’t get any eggs,
there was chickenshit everywhere, but it was our place.
“One day,” Johnny continued, “We were sitting around. Our motorcycle/chicken buddy was at work and
another one of the guys gets the idea to have a chicken dinner. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘It’s just one chicken, he
ain’t gonna miss it, how many are out there, a dozen?’”
“So,” said Johnny, “We got to chasing these chickens all
over the yard and it didn’t do no good, there wasn’t any catching them. They were dodging us, diving under the
double-wide, running into the woods, stuff like that.
“Then I remembered, ‘Hey guys, I’ve got a blow gun,’ I
said. So I went and got my blow gun and
started blowing blow darts at this one rooster.
Pretty soon he’s got like five of these darts in him and he drops.
“We all walked over and stood around the rooster and another
guy says, ‘Well, what do we do now?’ And I say, ‘Well I reckon we chop his head
off.’ So one of the other guys goes and
gets a hatchet and chops that ol’ rooster’s head plumb off.
“So then I told the guys we had to pluck the feathers so I
reach for the chicken and that sumbitch just stands right up with no head and
takes off. Freaked us out. Here’s this headless chicken running around
our yard. We’re yellin’ and hootin’ and
hollerin’ and soon this headless chicken just runs out into the road and gets
hit by a car, big cloud of feathers everywhere.
“We ate at Burger King that night,” said Johnny.
About then another customer pulled int the drive and I had
to go welcome them to the dealership.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment