strong like ball

[Beverly Flanigan]

I agree that this sounds awfully ghoulish and hardly laughable--but we
country kids grew up seeing lots of ghoulish things!

At 09:13 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>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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