Chickens at the market were non existant as we see them today. Believe this or not we put chicken coops out on the sidewalk in front of the store. We put fryers as we called them then, in these coops alive and sold them for 25 cents each. The lady picked out one. We got it out, holding the legs together. Then we tied the legs and put the bird either in a sack or in the car. We did not dress fryers at that time. Now chicken hens were a different story. We had a large chicken house back of the store next to the alley. We had a long wire with a hook in the end of it. When a customer wanted a hen we would catch the hook on a leg we would pull it out. We had a "hot plate" with gas hookup and a tub of water. We would dunk the hen, hang it on a hook and pluck the feathers in nothing flat. We took advance orders for turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We dressed these for hours and hours, a lot of them at night. In fact, the hours we worked and the salaries we were paid were unbelievable in this day and age. At Wink, I made $10.50 a week working 80 hours a week. Sometimes we worked more hours than that. |