RAISED IN A CHICKEN COUP

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This past weekend, my wife and I attended a vocal concert presented by one of my social media friends.

Lisbeth recounted her childhood in Central America, and how that she lived in a house with a dirt floor, no electricity, and no indoor plumbing. And while we have all heard of the existence of such conditions in so-called “third world countries,” when someone you know recounts having experienced an environment such as this, well, it gets your attention.

Here in America we take a lot for granted, I think, but we are not all that far removed from poverty. There are the ghettos which abound in all the big cities of the United States, the folks who live in their automobiles, young and not so young adults who stand in the medians of highways, and hold up “I will work for food” signs, and men, women and children who live in tents in trash-ridden out of the way places along railroad tracks.

For years I was under the impression that I had always been a member of a middle class culture; ‘til one day my mother shared a story with me. While I have the dimmest memory of having lived in the Coral Gables area of South Florida, (I was 0-5 at the time) what my mother told me that day put a whole new perspective on my childhood.

For you see, mama informed me that while my dad eked out a living as a roofer, we lived

…in a chicken coop.

Well, to be fair, a refurbished chicken coop. Apparently, one day my parent’s landlord decided that housing human beings would be more profitable than housing chickens. And thus, on such and such a day, she slaughtered, butchered, and refrigerated the chickens, and converted their former nesting place into a rental apartment; suitable for human occupation.

To be sure, the floor was cement and tile, and we had electricity and running water. But I am told that “when nature called,” or we needed a bath, we had to walk out the front door, into the yard, through an enclosed porch, and into a mutual bathroom attached to the landlord’s home.

While my formative years were spent in a chicken coop, compared to the friend to whom I have previously alluded, I think I had it pretty good.

by Bill McDonald, PhD