Lynn Hammond is a lifesaver. Had it not been for her web of contacts throughout the chicken stew community, I would be dead meat about now. But perhaps I should explain.
If you’ve lived around these parts for longer than a year or so, it can’t have escaped your notice there are certain culinary delicacies peculiar to our little corner of north Georgia, but it is our own concoction of Chicken Stew that puts us on the map.
First, you gotta have chickens — lots of chickens – and they need to be cooked, boned and de-gizzarded.
In other words, you just want the meat. Grind up the meat and start adding tomatoes, tomato sauce, and corn. Now the fun starts.
Pour the chicken, tomatoes, sauce, and corn into black iron pots and cook over an open fire all night. Add salt and pepper to taste. Then you can kick in other spices to make that batch your own. After an all-night cooking with a few friends, one of whom brought some rum pound cake without the cake, and you’ve got one jam-up pot of chicken stew.
Around these parts, some of the churches have held Chicken Stews as fundraisers for as long as I can remember. The Arnolds and a lot of other families I know empty out freezer space so they can pack in quarts of chicken stew to carry them through the winter. (The churches don’t have these things every week, so you have to stock up.) Such a ritual it is that to be overlooked on the Chicken Stew ticket list is like being uninvited to a family reunion. That happened this year. The pater familias (my father) was most distressed. He called my house about five o’clock one afternoon a few weeks ago to express his displeasure at having been overlooked for the Chicken Stew sale. The conversation went something like this: “Do you know anybody over at the Christian Church?”
“Yeah, I know several folks over there. Why?” Surely after all these years as a Methodist, he wasn’t entertaining the idea of switching denominations.
Considering he’s recently decided to donate his body to the body farm in Knoxville rather than be buried so budding forensic scientists can see what happens to a 90-year-old man in the trunk of a car in the middle of July, not much surprises me anymore.
“Well, this is the first year I haven’t been called to buy Chicken Stew tickets and I need to find somebody who can get some for us.”
“Who’d you buy them from last year?” I thought this was a reasonable question.
“I always bought my tickets from Pete Doster.”
“Well, Daddy, hasn’t Mr. Pete been gone for a few years now? Who’d you buy them from last year?”
“After Pete died, I started buying them from…” With that, he proceeded to list every person from whom he’s procured Chicken Stew since 1951 or however long they’ve been holding these annual events.
“Time out, Dad. Let’s fast forward to now. Who’d you buy stew from last year?”
“Well, I always bought ‘em from Pete Doster and they’re supposed to keep a list of who buys every year so they don’t miss anyone who’s a regular customer. I was in business for over 40 years. If you ignore people, they’ll just go away.”
“Well, Daddy, I think we’ve established that you haven’t bought them from Pete lately. Who’d you buy them from last year? We can call them and see whether they saved you some tickets since they know you always want stew?”
“Well, I always bought ‘em from Pete…” “Daddy, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but I don’t really care about who all you’ve bought from for the past sixty years, how many quarts you got, what the prices were and how the weather was the day of the stew. Tell you what, let me call Lynn Hammond and see whether she can track us down some tickets.”
My father is not senile; far from it. He just wanted to demonstrate the miraculous condition of his total recall regarding Chicken Stew purchases over the last half-century.
He could probably tell me who all was at the church when the stew was picked up, what time he got it, what they talked about, and recite each year’s events chronologically.
Lynn called me the next day with — bless her heart — 25 quarts of stew available. C.H. was fulfilled.
He could sleep a happy man knowing he had Chicken Stew from the First Christian Church to carry them through the winter. I feel certain Pete Doster would be pleased.
Helen Person is a Winder resident and columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at helenperson@windstream.net.
