I Buried The Chicken!

I have mentioned several times that I was a willful child. It was the reason I married at sixteen instead of getting my secondary education that I wanted. The love of my life turned out to be an angry man with a volcano of fury that erupted every once in awhile. The general target was me.
We lived in a little town called Cleghorn. It was just a few miles to Cherokee. We had purchased a little house and fixed it up. It was a little doll house. I think it had three rooms and a bath. He was very clever at building and he made the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room into a built in desk and ironing board. On the kitchen side were bar stools and a small television set.
He repaired farmer’s implements like plows, balers, combines etc. Of course, the farmers all waited to the last minute and hollered because their things were not fixed immediately. When this happened I was in trouble.
This was my schedule, I made sure that the television was turned on before the six o’clock whistle. I made sure that the beer was cold and I also made sure that supper was on the table, no later than six fifteen.
I made friends with the couple next door. They were older than we were ( who wouldn’t be?) but we had a good time together. Her coffee pot was always on. That is where I learned how to drink the bitter stuff. She smoked like a steam engine, gossiped something fierce, and drank coffee from morning til night. Her four kids adored her and so did I.
I learned how to clean house from her. My mother would have just croaked to see how she did it. She used a dust mop and started at one end of the house. She pushed and/or shoveled, toys and clothes and dirt with this big mop to its final destination. Actually it was an efficient way of doing things. It covered a lot of area and got everything to one place for disposal or laundry. The kids knew what was going to happen when they saw mom with the mop so they scampered towards the pile to salvage their toys. Who needs to pay two hundred dollars an hour for a child parenting class when you have a two foot mop?
She was a former hair dresser. At the time I knew her, she had let her license expire so she couldn’t charge to fix lady’s hair but they gave her donations of fifty cents. Mercy!
One lady was an elderly lady that had an attitude. She gossiped something fierce. When my friend or one of her kids did something wrong she would always say “Hell’s Bells, Girl!” That always tickled me. I had never heard anyone talk like that; remember I was only sixteen.
Any way back to the chicken, I got to rambling and this is a pretty good story.
One day I decided to have fried chicken for supper. Most of you know that fried chicken takes about an hour give or take a little. I was very bored so I thought I would visit my friend for a while. I guess I stayed a bit longer than I thought I had. When I ran next door to my house, the house was full of smoke and the chicken was so burned that it had adhered itself to the pan on one side, raw on the top. I knew I was in trouble, so I quick grabbed a shovel, buried the chicken, pan and all. I had opened all the doors and windows, sprayed with air freshener and started a new supper that was done by six fifteen. Easy beans!!