Wow, got to work, was in the middle of posting and Bamm, lost power in the building. Everything in our area, not just our building. I waited 45 min and then decided "screw it" undocked the laptop and headed home to work the rest of the day.
Will say, better coffee here and I can see the Redhead
. At work, she looked like a linked McAffee Filter warning, heh heh.
Glen, sounds like our G'mas were cut from the same cloth. Sharecroppers, full working farm. My mom grew up in a house without plumbing and electrical until my Grandpa put it in. My memories are of a different two story Farm House two miles down the road from the original homestead. In typical, Central Illinois creativity, they called it the Two Mile Corner.
The two by four incident was when I was about eleven. We raised chickens and calves for awhile where I grew up. Grandma and Grandpa were over one summer afternoon to barbecue and I was tasked with getting the eggs.
Now, we had around twenty to thirty hens and three of the most evil White Rock roosters to ever peck the earth. Usually I could fake the roosters out long enough to get into the chicken house, shut the door, gather the eggs quickly and beat feet. However, on this one particular day I had only seen two of the three roosters at the other end of the pasture and made a disastrous assumption.
I rushed into the Chicken House, locked the door behind me, turned ......... and saw Henry....... Meanest of the three. Maybe his temperament was due to the fact that my sisters named him Henrietta as a chick, forcing him to live a transgendered life until it was obvious he was a rooster and my Sis's finally gave in to a name change. Needless to say, of the three "Sister Named" roosters...It is only that bastard's name that I remember.
Screaming (as only a pre-pubescent eleven year old boy can) triggered a full attack mode in Henry. None of our roosters had been clipped and all three had gnarly spurs and these guys had been practicing on each other for years. Henry was intent on inflicting maximum damage on the cornered youth...As he was repeatedly attempting to spur me in the legs, I was repeatedly trying to punt him like Ray Guy on speed. In the confined spaces of that hen house (which had been simmering in the mid 90s all day) those wings of Henry's quickly stirred up feathers, dust, feed, old straw and all manner of dried fecal matter.
Now nearly blind and frantic, my only thoughts were of semi dignified escape. Ray Guy had nothing to worry about from the Rook and I wanted to live to fight another day.