Cooking The Holiday Bird

I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to pick up some soup and milk. When I pulled up in front of the gasoline pumps, Ellie came bouncing out to ask if I needed her to fill my car. Ellie is Jake’s grandchild. She lives with Jake’s daughter, Chrissy, and her husband, Paul, up in Jersey. I remembered Jake telling me his daughter and family would be down for Christmas. The holidays have slipped up on me this year. Usually I am fully aware Christmas is on the approach, but this year my attention must have been directed elsewhere. Possibly the reason is that I am pushing a deadline for a project for a company in Memphis and I have been sitting at my computer fourteen to sixteen hours per day. I usually have the radio on while working, but this project requires a maximum of concentration and the radio is a distraction when I am stringing words together in what I hope is a professional manner. For whatever reason, seeing Ellie come bubbling out of the store made me realize how time is rushing past and the end of another year is upon us.

I asked Ellie if she was big enough to reach the gas nozzle and she frowned a moment, then said she would just stand back and instruct me how to fill the tank and she would supervise. Jake came out about that time and said Ellie was learning to be a woman at an early age. He said Maureen, his wife, was always good at supervising while Jake did all the work and their daughter took right after her. It seems supervising women run in Jake’s family.

“Well, you dumb men need someone to tell you how to do things proper,” Chrissy said from the door where she was standing. “If women didn’t tell you men how to do things the right way, the world would be in a bigger mess than it is now,”

Jake said that discussion had been running at his house since he first married Maureen and he had never yet come out on top. Jake filled the tank while I made small talk with Chrissy. She is a pretty young woman, takes after her mother. The tank was filled and we all went back inside the store. I asked about Paul and Chrissy said he was over with Maureen helping with the cooking. Paul is a fine cook, it seems, and Maureen had rather have him helping out in the kitchen than Chrissy. Jake suggested the real reason Paul was so successful in the kitchen with Maureen was that he always agreed with everything Maureen said about how to best cook anything. If Chrissy was in the kitchen, there was always more discussion than cooking. We let the talk continue in that vein until Ellie came running up. She grasped her mother’s hand and began to tug. She had found something she wanted to show off. She wanted Jake and me to come along, too.

We followed Ellie over to the grocery aisles where she held her finger to her lips. Carefully she looked around the end of the shelves and pointed. About half way down the length of the aisle was a little bird pecking at something spilled on the floor. I am not a bird expert, but it looked like some kind of sparrow. Chrissy was amazed by the little bird and wondered how it came to be inside the store. “That’s Skeeter,” Jake told her. Seems birds are always getting into the store through the back door where the farmers back their trucks to load up with feed and seed. Mostly the birds stay inside a couple days until they find their way out. Skeeter has been inside since at least mid November and shows no inclination of looking to get out. Mister Johnson first noticed him before Thanksgiving and thought he had been inside a couple weeks by that time. When he was still in the store come early December, Mister Johnson took to calling him Skeeter. Ellie thought Chirpy would have been a better name than Skeeter and Jake suggested she go and discuss bird names with Mister Johnson. Ellie was off in a flash to the pot belly stove where Mister Johnson was at his chair talking things over with Jack Witherspoon. Jack doesn’t come into the store much as he is a full time farmer and does not have the spare time to sit around and talk. But the weather has been so cool and wet the past few weeks, Jack has found some time on his hands and he likes to talk with Mister Johnson.

Jake was saying birds are funny creatures. Most birds who get trapped in the store are all aflutter to get out, but this one appears content enough on the inside. He probably finds enough to eat back in the feed section. There are plenty of sacks of grain and a small spill will keep a bird his size happy for weeks. I wondered about water and Jake said he has no idea where a bird might find water, but obviously this one finds enough some place to fill his needs. Just thinking about it, Jake decided he would fill a small pan with water and set it in the back where the bird would find it. If they were going to name the bird, Jake decided it wouldn’t hurt to help keep it alive. If the thing died, it could give an unpleasant stench to the store for a few days.

I stood watching the bird a few minutes as Jake went to get a pan for the water. At last the bird cocked its head and flew up into the rafters. I went over to see what Skeeter had been eating and could find nothing. Apparently he had cleaned the last crumb. I went over to say hello to Mister Johnson and found Ellie in deep conversation with Mister Johnson about the bird. Apparently the name change to Chirpy had come about and they were now trying to figure out how to get the bird to recognize his new name. That was a definite problem as Skeeter/Chirpy had not yet paid much mind to his Skeeter name. Mister Johnson said he was feeling fine and asked about Mutt. I picked up my soup and milk and went to pay up. Chrissy was about ready to go back across the road to the house. They were planning a big dinner Sunday evening and Chrissy asked if I had any plans. When I said I was planning to work Sunday afternoon, Chrissy said I could take off the time to come eat with them. So I guess I’ll have Sunday dinner with Jake and his family this weekend.

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