Growing Up on Dump Ground Road Pt. 5

  My family enjoyed a typical southern diet, when I was “Growing Up on Dump Ground Road.” In the summertime, we ate whatever we grew in the garden. We also canned vegetables to carry us over into the winter months. Mostly our meats were ground beef and chicken. My mother knew a thousand ways to disguise ground beef and to cook with chicken. However, Sunday lunch was always the same…fried chicken. There was never any question or doubt about it.

Each member of the family had our designated pieces of the chicken. I am not sure who was in charge of making the assignments, but I know that my pieces were legs and thighs. I must have been an adult before I discovered that a chicken also had white meat. To this day, I still prefer the dark meat of the chicken instead of white. My chicken of choice is still legs and thighs. Strangely, I married a girl who loves fried chicken but hates to cook it. When Sandy and I were newlyweds, I asked her specifically not to serve fried chicken for our lunch on Sundays. Since we were poor as church mice, living mostly on tuna and ground beef, this was not a hard request to honor. When we did manage to scrape together enough money to buy fried chicken, I discovered that we were the perfect couple. She loved white meat and I loved the dark!

As silly as it sounds, marriages have failed over things that are just this minor. I have seen families divided and friendships dissolved over petty differences of opinions. People will hold grudges and harbor hatred towards other people because of something as minor as the color of their skin or the political party with which they identify. In the last presidential election, emotions grew so intense that relationships were lost over the differing sides that were taken. I am afraid that we have lost the ability to disagree in a civil manner. We have come to a place where reaching for the wrong piece of chicken might lead to a fork in your hand!

God help us all to come to our senses! Serving in love, Bro. Jim