It was 1958 and my grandmother ran to her farmhouse window because she’d heard a car coming. She yelled out the name of the driver or state it was a stranger but she knew someone on up the road was expecting their aunt. Latter she sent me out to gather eggs but I came back empty. The birds sat at eye my eye level and pecked the dickens out of me. The entire household laughed when I came back empty and Grandma sent me out again to “Just knock them off their nests!” I came back in twice more; I was a wimp and those birds looked bigger than me.
Grandmother shouted at me to follow and stomped her way out to the coop to show me how to do it. She had no problem with chickens. She was deadly, those birds stood down when they heard the door slam. They were quaking down to their little chicken toes.
My cousin was kind enough not to laugh, she’d been out of her element too. When she visited my house on Mary Street in Omaha, she’d run to the window whenever she heard a car coming and yell out, “Who’s that?” but soon wanted to go home. She wanted to get out of that place. We were living in the mist of strangers. Lots of strangers. And my family didn’t know anyone.nancymauerman.com