Learnings

My students and I are delighted to write with Amy Ludwig Vanderwater each day while school is out of session. Amy has generously created a video for each day of quarantine, sharing them with teachers at no cost in Keeping a Writer's Notebook. When I opened this resource, I knew I had come upon a treasure trove of writing lessons.

We join Amy each day in  Betsy the Camper, literally her camper which is parked in her backyard.  Honestly, this is absolutely charming.  Also, Amy demonstrates for us how to create a writer’s notebook with plain white paper sewn together with a pamphlet stitch and pasted into the cereal box covers as demonstrated by Amy in the first lesson.  How special and fun is that?

One of my favorite pieces came from Learnings.  In this lesson, writers are given the challenge to list things we want to learn, choose one, and write about it.   In my hand-made notebook, I sketched my ideas and jotted a quick note beside each one. For example, I wrote about how I want to learn how to use my new camera, play the guitar, create beautiful pots and vases on a potter’s wheel, and raise chickens.   

As I reflected on each of these, one memory in particular emerged.  I wrote the following story and I’ll share it with my students remotely this week.  

Learning to Feed Chickens from Old Man Eaton

By Catherine Gehman

When I was a young girl in the mid 1960’s, I lived in the suburbs on the North Shore of Long Island.  And it was there I learned how to feed chickens from the old man who lived next door.  Feeding chickens is neither difficult nor does it require much skill, but I remember this experience until this day, and now I am the one getting old.   

He lived in a tiny decrepit weather-worn shack on which the Kelly green color was beginning to surrender to the gray wood underneath.  He was slender and hunched over, but when he lifted his head to greet us, his serene and almost translucent blue eyes were revealed amidst the deep crevices of his wrinkled face. He was in his late nineties, and his name was Old Man Eaton.  I cannot tell you his first name because I did not know it then and do not until this very day. 

My siblings and I often made our way to Old Man Eaton’s yard through a three-foot opening at the end of the stockade fence that separated the properties where his chicken coops were situated. We were greeted with the frenzied clucks of hens and chirps of baby chicks, but the rooster, leery of us as we were of him, kept his distance.  Although we were delighted by his crow at dawn, we knew he could get aggressive and wanted nothing of it.  

Old Man Eaton would see us from his kitchen window and give us a wave with one hand as he held the calico curtain open with the other.  It was as if he anticipated our visits because he would come out and join us at his coops bringing with him a rusty old aluminum pail filled with chicken feed.

On a fall day when the air was brisk, I learned how to feed chickens. My sisters had already begun tossing seed about, but I was the youngest and needed some help.  So, the old man reached out for my hand and turned it upward to the sky.  “Hold it there,” he instructed.  Then he funneled through his fist a small mound of chicken feed into my palm.  Taking his own fistful he said, “Just like this,” as he demonstrated the movement of his hands back and forth, releasing the feed.  I copied.  He showed me how to open my fingers slightly as I shook, creating a sieve. Then, shaking my hand vigorously back and forth, I peppered the ground with feed and watched with great delight the chickens and baby chicks run about for their morning meal.  My sisters and I giggled as we danced about to get away from the chickens mistakenly pecking at our shoes. In return for our effort, Old Man Eaton sent us home with fresh eggs.  And, while the journey back to our yard was just a few feet away, it feels in my memory sort of fairy tail-ish.

Old Man Eaton died before I turned eight.  I cried as I rested my chin on the window sill in my parents’ bedroom and watched the bulldozers demolish his tiny old weather-worn shack.  The shack where a beautiful old man turned my palm toward the sky to fill it with chicken feed and unknowingly left an indelible mark of kindness and patience on my young soul.  The shack that represented childhood joy.  The shack where in the yard chickens fed, baby chicks chirped, and a rooster once crowed at dawn.