Blackbird
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Aqua's thread triggered a memory...
Many of you have had a chicken and sausage gumbo or a good seafood gumbo. But other things make pretty good gumbo. Rabbit is passable. We even tried at the camp one time to make a coon gumbo. Helps to be hungry on that one. Quail is good. Guinea was real common on the rural route and many of the old folks swear they make the best gumbo there is.
In my part of the world, we'd make gumbo with blackbirds. Blackbirds are migratory and they tend to show up around this time of the year.
Grandma would call me up and tell me, "Son, when you get a chance, I'd sure like to have a mess of blackbirds".
I knew what she wanted them for. A gumbo. I'd catch a flock on the ground and shoot up among them. First shot on the ground, second as they were coming up and third shot on the wing. That would usually get me a dozen to maybe twenty, as I'd chase down and kill the cripples.
I never plucked them completely, we weren't that poor. No, you breast them out and the process is a lot easier and faster. I'd bring the breasts to Grandma and she'd make a gumbo so dark, it was almost black. Wrap yourself around that and a couple of pieces of hot cornbread, and it was some mighty fine eating. Maybe add a small roasted sweet potato for a bit of sweet.
Grandpa Jolly died when I was pretty young, but some things he said have just hung around forever. He did a pretty good job keeping the wolf away from the door, but he worked some physically demanding jobs to make ends meet. One of things he did say, and took pride in, was that nobody went hungry at his house, not family, not friends and not strangers.
The table was in the middle of the kitchen. It was one of those aqua and white tables popular in the 50's, the kind with the metal legs. It had three matching chairs, with the other three being ladder-backed chairs with cowhide bottoms. There was one bare lightbulb in a keyless fixture above the table, with a pullchain to turn it off and on. Around the walls of the kitchen was a butane stove with an ever-present coffee pot, an old rounded-top Coldspot refrigerator that Grandpa bought on time, after they got electricity...That must have been about 1951 or so, not long after dad got through with his hitch in the Army. Big old farmhouse sink on the back wall, with three faucets, one for hot water, one for cold water and one for rainwater, gravity fed from the cistern.
While Grandma was alive, I never walked into that kitchen without something on the table. Persimmon bread, a hickory nut cake, a coconut cake or maybe a platter of teacakes. If you were around dinner, it might be something simple, but supper was going to be hot, and plenty of it.
Sometimes, it was blackbird gumbo...
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Jolly, I don’t care what George and Mik say about you, you tell a good story. I could see and hear those injured blackbirds flopping on a wing. Maybe I shot a few myself during my Florida adolescence. Prolly a .177 caliber pellet gun. Pretty basic, but does the job. On one at least.
