A Chicken in Every Pot

 

 

Carolyn J. Rose

I wasn’t around when Herbert Hoover’s campaign called for “a chicken for every pot.” I can’t remember when I heard the slogan in a history class, a slogan that had been changed to “a chicken in every pot.” What I do recall is the moment I realized there are some pots that should never, in my firm opinion,contain a chicken.

 

When I joined Volunteers in Service to America in 1970, I was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas. It was July, with a steamy humid heat like nothing I’d never experienced growing up in the Catskills or going to college in Tucson. It was a heat that barely loosened its grip after sundown, a heat that shot up again with only a slight grace period after dawn.

 

VISTA’s monthly allotment was a sum of less than $200 a month after taxes and I seem to recall it was referred to as a stipend rather than pay. Buying an air conditioner or paying for the power to run it was out of the question. Fans did little to help, simply slapping soggy air. Perspiration didn’t evaporate. Sweat stuck around.

 

Cold water provided a little from-the-inside-out relief. Cold beer helped more. And one particular brand of beer (a brand I won’t name) was on sale that summer. A quart was around a quarter. But those quarts were cheap because they weren’t chilled. Our refrigerators were small and, by today’s standards, didn’t get the job done quickly.

 

So, the four or five of us who regularly met to cobble together an evening meal developed a strategy. No matter how many bottles of beer we bought, we left at least one—and ideally two—in the refrigerator. Those, like sourdough starter, slaked our thirst at the next gathering. Of the warm bottles purchased for that gathering, two went into the tiny freezer compartment to chill. The rest were stashed in the coldest part of the refrigerator. If they weren’t chilled to perfection—or even close—by the time we opened them, it seldom seemed to matter. It was the first beer that absolutely had to be cold.

 

Whole chickens were also extremely cheap that summer, so we had chicken at every group meal. No one even dreamed of turning on the oven, especially not in the second-floor apartment of two male volunteers. Chicken was chopped up and grilled on a tiny Hibachi. When they discovered they were out of charcoal, it was fried. Housekeeping was never my strong suit and it really wasn’t the strong suit of those two guys. When the frying pan accumulated so much caked-on grease we couldn’t stand to look at it, and when no guests stepped up to do the scrubbing, the chicken went into a pot of water and was boiled, made into soup, or shredded for sandwiches. When that pot developed a crusty ring, the guys dug out a second pot. The second pot soon reached the point where the word “disgusting” didn’t begin to describe it. The first pot and the frying pan still languished, unscrubbed, on the counter.

 

Remaining hopeful for a burst of hygiene, I set out for their apartment a few days later carrying several bottles of beer. As I climbed the stairs, I smelled chicken, onion, and another aroma. It was familiar. I knew I smelled it often. But I couldn’t place it.

 

I opened the door, set my beer offering on the kitchen table, and turned to the stove. There, bubbling away, was a pot. A dented metal coffeepot. A coffeepot without the basket for ground coffee or the perk tube. A coffeepot with a chicken crammed inside.

 

Well, most of the chicken was crammed in. The legs, pale and pimpled, stuck out.

 

I gagged. My appetite disappeared. Leaving the beer behind, I fled.

 

To this day, whenever I see chicken, in any form, I get a sharp mental picture of that chicken and that pot. After more than 50 years, I no longer gag. I chuckle. Then I insert the word “almost” into the campaign slogan.