When I was about ten years old I noticed my older sister wasn’t having to do the dishes after supper. I asked my mama, “Why isn’t Mary helping with the dishes?” (Sounds like Martha in the Bible when Mary wasn’t helpng prepare the meal for Jesus.) Mama said, “Because she cooked supper.” I said, “You mean if you cook the meal you don’t have to do the dishes?” ‘Yes.” my mama said. Well the only thing I hated worse than chopping weeds was doing the dishes so I immediately said, “Well teach me to cook!” This began a very slow process of teaching a tomboy how to do things that meant she had to be a girl thus preparing her for the day she would be a wife and mama, I think. The first thing I had to learn was to make biscuts. We were fairly poor I guess because we got commodities which included flour. My first experience was scary because I wasn’t supposed to do something or the biscuts wouldn’t raise or maybe that was the cornbread I had to make another day. Well anyways my first batch of biscuts turned out kind of okay but had little pieces of baking powder in them which hadn’t mixed into the batter right. I guess that was my fault but don’t really remember.  The gravy was thick enough though that we could use it for biscuts if we wanted too. I made a pound cake along about this time also which weighed about 20 pounds. I think I invented a new kind of brick.  Well back to the biscuts. The second batch proved to be deadly. They were like hockey pucks. No amount of gravy could save them. After everyone had a good laugh at my expense we were going to just give them to the hogs. We lived on a farm so garbage was very appreciated by the animals. About three of us kids (there were nine of us) went outside and spotted some of mama’s fruit jars sitting next to the old smokehouse where we cured our hams. I don’t remember which one threw the first biscut at a jar but it exploded like a hand grenade had hit it. It made the most amazing sound too. Oh wow! This was going to be fun. All of us started throwing them and shattering the jars. We had a bountiful supply of biscuts because there were about 15 people in our family and generally there were enough to each have two plus if company showed up, which we had a few relatives that did this just about every mealtime, and Daddy usually took a few in his lunch pail. After the initial firing of the biggest biscuts, mama’s old red rooster came gawking out across the yard. To this day I don’t know what possessed me but I pulled back on that old rooster with the last biscut I had in my hand and fired. That biscut hit that bird with the accuracy of some of the rockets they have today. I believe they call them smart bombs. Well what I did wasn’t so smart. I hit him square in the neck and he squawked real loud and went to flopping on the ground. Scared me so bad that I think I screamed. Then the humor hit us and we went to laughing until mama came out to see what was going on. I really thought I was about to meet my Maker and probably said a quick prayer. Mama was really cool about her rooster because she said she didn’t ever much care for him cause he flogged us sometimes. She even had a good laugh over the irony of it-then she saw her fruit jars and her face went ghost white. She could cook that bird which we did that night for supper but her jars were valued highly because we canned everything and these would have to be replaced with money she just didn’t have.  Needless to say I didn’t get a whipping for killing that old red rooster but for busting mama’s fruit jars. All that were involved in this crime went around with little red bottoms for a few days.  My chicken killing days are over and my cooking finally got raves from anyone who ate at my table but I will never forget the ‘old red rooster who not only paid the price for my cooking lessons but gave his life to improve them. Where’s the chicken? Forever etched in my memory!