strong like ball

[Wilson Gray]

I think that it helps if you're intimately familiar with this killing
method. In any case, the wrist twist, when done properly, tears off the
chicken's head and pulls out its esophagus. The way dInIs did it, he
merely broke the chicken's neck, leaving it otherwise in one piece. He
doesn't say so, but it's probably correct to assume that he freaked and
dropped the chicken in shock instead of maintaining his hold on the
chicken's head and trying again. I certainly would loved to see the
expression on dInIs's face when he realized that he had bleeped up. Or,
maybe you just had to have been there, city slicker.

-Wilson

On Mar 3, 2005, at 6:22 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: strong like ball
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> I don't get it.
>
> JL
>
> Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Beverly Flanigan
> Subject: Re: strong like ball
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> This sent me into such gales of laughter that I'm forwarding it to all
> my
> colleagues (one stopped in my doorway and wondered why I was howling).
>
> At 02:39 PM 3/3/2005, you wrote:
>> We had chickens, and this twist of the wrist was a coming of age
>> phenomenon for me. The first time I was sent out to do the deed
>> (which I had observed many times), a breaking rather than a parting
>> of the neck resulted, so that the poor critter could no longer hold
>> its head up, but it did indeed run around the yard, like a chicken
>> with its head a-danglin rather than like one with its head cut off. I
>> caught it and took my little hatchet to it.
>>
>> I was later successful with this flick of the wrist and sent many
>> birds to the big coop in the sky.
>>
>> dInIs
>>
>>
>>> At 11:09 PM 3/2/2005, you wrote:
>>>> My grandmother used both "greedy-gut" and "glutton" with wild
>>>> abandon.
>>>> However, I don't recall that she ever said just plain "gut(s)." She
>>>> used "insides" for chickens or named the individual parts thereof,
>>>> when
>>>> asked. Since we had our own chickens, I saw my grandfather kill a
>>>> chicken by literally wringing its neck. He picked up the chicken by
>>>> its
>>>> head, made a particular movement with his wrist, and the chicken's
>>>> head
>>>> remained in his hand and its body fell to the ground, where it ran
>>>> around like a chicken with its head cut or, rather, torn off.
>>>>
>>>> So, I've seen a literal slap on the wrist, a neck literally wrung,
>>>> and
>>>> a chicken literally running around with its head torn off.
>>>
>>> I have too--in fact, my mother did the chicken-neck wringing so that
>>> we
>>> could have "chicken every Sunday."
>
>
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