Rooster Crowing in the Dawn’s Early Light

I heard a rooster crowing in the distance this morning when I stepped out onto the porch at my home to let the dog out to do her morning business. Not an unusual occurrence as I have heard roosters crowing early in the mornings on several occasions while living in my present home which is located fairly close to town in Bonifay, Florida.

Then I started to think about how long I have been hearing roosters crow in the mornings and I realized that I literally have been able to hear roosters crow from every place I have ever lived in my entire life so far of 64 years. Beginning when I was a baby and was first brought home to the Lee farm there were chickens and roosters on the place belonging to my Ma (paternal grandmother) and the roosters were crowing right close to daybreak each day.

Since that time including my college dormitory, a rental home just after we got married, the first everybody in the south owns one at one time or another trailer house, the trailer park in Pensacola while in college, our first bought home in Marianna, Florida, another trailer with an expandable living room, a rental home, our first bought home in Bonifay, another rental while waiting for our present home to be built and our home now, I have lived in 11 different places in my life. If you are counting, I did not include a couple of times we moved the trailer. Anyway, in every single one of these locations, I was close enough to the country that if I listened closely in the early morning, I could hear a rooster crowing somewhere.

I am sure there are people out there somewhere who have never lived close to where the roosters crow. I know there are many people who have never gathered eggs from under a hen, have never poured laying mash into a chicken trough and have never seen a bunch of biddies scrambling around to eat scratch feed out in front of a barn. They have also never reached into a dark hen nest to get the eggs only to feel the slimy skin of a white oak snake making himself at home and enjoying a freshly laid egg. Still makes my skin crawl to just think about this.

I have never lived in a large metropolitan area with the hustle and bustle that brings with it. I have never had to sit through many traffic jams where I have lived to get to work unless you count getting stuck behind a John Deere tractor, a load of hay or a combine with several cars behind it counts.

As a remembrance of hearing roosters crow, I remember many times when young roosters would begin to learn how to crow, often standing right outside my bedroom window  while growing up on the farm. This is some type of awful racket to wake to in the morning with each of the young birds trying their best to imitate the grand sounds of the adult roosters crowing.  This is a sound way worse than hearing a teen-age boy’s voice crackle when he is in the rages of puberty working on his vocal chords.

I don’t know if there is any deep meaning from this other than I guess I have been close to my roots my whole life. But, I can tell you what it does mean. It means that I have been within a short distance to my kind of folks most all my life. Folks who understand what living in the country means. Folks who know that to hear a rooster crow in the morning means that somebody is tending to and feeding that rooster and the chickens that go with him every day. Folks that can gather up some yard eggs, fry them along with some bacon or ham, make a little red-eye gravy and cook some cat-head biscuits with a bowl of grits in the mornings for breakfast about the same time the sun is breaking the horizon.  For a fine finish to a breakfast like this, add in a little homemade syrup and some real butter that was churned at home.

Anyway, just a realization I have been close to where roosters crow in every place I have ever lived. Proud to still live close to my roots.