Published: July 03, 2008 08:33 am         

More from the general store

Jim Atwell

Once, back in 18th-century England, Samuel Johnson was bouncing along in a crowded coach, heading for a town some distance from his beloved London. He was probably deep in thought, ignoring whatever scenery was beyond the open windows. (A stolid urbanite, he once described the countryside as unused space between towns.)

Next to Johnson, jostled every time the coach struck a rut and bounced his considerable weight, was a society woman in all her traveling finery. She was breathless, not from awe for The Great Man, England’s most famous citizen, but for the stench rising from that large and rarely washed body. Finally she struck him on the wrist with her closed fan.

“Dr. Johnson,” she cried, “you smell!” The compiler of “A Dictionary of the English Language” opened his hooded eyes and spoke, but only to distinguish between active and passive verbs.

“No, madam, it is you who smell. I stink.”

These days Johnson comes to mind every time I enter the barn and hit, face on, the stench of the caged turkey poults. I do the smelling; they, passively, stink. I also recall advice from an old nurse, veteran of a thousand sickrooms: “Just breathe through your mouth, dear.” That’s what I do.

Thank goodness, the birds will be moving soon to larger, airier quarters in the former pig shed. And after a few weeks, I hope, the barn’s downstairs will again smell pleasantly of sawdust, machine oil, and stored hay. By then the turkeys ought to look a lot better, too. Right now, they’re downright ugly. I’ve watched generations of baby chickens and enjoyed their transition from fluffy yellow down, through fledging, and into full feathers.

These turkeys had a very brief stage of downy cuteness and then leaped into a gangly, awkward adolescence, careening around on feet too big for them, knocking into each other, making a mess of their room. And eating, eating, eating.

And, like some of our own species, these teens dress terribly. Their present first feathers are mostly dull brown and always rumpled. It’s unkind, I guess, to comment on their faces, but these young birds are downright ugly — sharp beaks; long, naked necks; eyes bright and beady like a vulture’s.

Of course they’ll grow out of all this and end up handsome birds and credits to society. Now, more from the Fly Creek General Store and the Sages who gather there for coffee. The same day we were talking about turkeys, wild and domestic, we shifted to the signs of the times, especially changes around here that suggest more and bigger ones to come.

A first one noted was the near hysteria of the relentless car ads now on TV. The archetypes, of course, are Billy Fuccillo’s, who uses megaphone tones to tout smaller cars with modestly improved mileage. Billy’s backed up now, not by a straight man in a suit, but mostly by a leggy girl in skirts reaching to meet her cleavage. Billy himself, his pitch all sweat, spit, and stammer, shouts nothing about the big clunkers on his lot. If you buy a compact from him next year, I bet he’ll throw in an SUV.

But there are other, far more positive signs of change. Lots of us are driving slower, keeping a lighter foot on the accelerator, even coasting down our long hills. (Advice from Michael Thrower in England, where petrol is now the equivalent of $18 per gallon: Drive and accelerate softly, as if you had a raw egg under the pedal.) And another positive sign, if a frustrating one: waiting time for a new Prius (about the best around right now) is up to seven months. By luck or providence, Anne and I got ours 14 months ago, just before things began to get wild. We love it, found it great last winter with snow tires all around. And in June we traveled comfortably around southern Canada, four adults and four big suitcases, plenty of leg room.

The only flaw of the Prius, I’m told, is that their owners talk incessantly about them. So I won’t mention the 55-60 mpg we got on that Canada trip.

But here’s the best positive sign around here just now. Through spring, vegetable seeds flew off the shelves. And lots of us are building chicken coops. Friends at Cooperstown Agway tell me their one store sold over 3,000 chicks this year, and is still selling. Good signs, I think, of growing awareness that a major sea change is under way. All but the most stolid nay-sayers acknowledge that, these days, it’s not only cheaper, but far safer to buy locally produced food. The booming farmers’ markets are proof of that.

I have a gentle suggestion for the Cooperstown leadership. Consider dropping the prohibition on raising fowl in the village. Instead, establish a minimum lot size for doing it, and permit up to 10 hens. No roosters, since their cock-a-doodling can be really annoying, especially if several are at it. And, you novices to egg production, you don’t need a rooster to do it. Hens can handle it all on their own, thank you, and up to an egg every 30 hours. They aren’t fertilized, but who cares?

Well, maybe the hens ...

Find out about Jim Atwell’s book, “From Fly Creek — Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country” at www. JimAtwell.com.