My father was born in 1932 but reared by his maternal grandparents in the remote Texas country.  He did not have running water or electricity until he was about ten!  My father told me about one room school houses and out houses and things that hearkened back to a much earlier time like something on my favorite TV show “Little House on the Prairie”.  In his youth he witnessed incredible, almost unbelievable things like crosses burning on lawns, bootleggers, and the preacher’s wife fighting with his grandmother at the feed store over the last sack of flour.  It was not because they needed the flour; it was that the companies printed designs on them and women made Sunday dresses out of them.  Apparently there was only one of this particular design left and both women were in a tug-of-war over it.  He said his grandmother wanted/needed it to make a bonnet.  As a kid I’d listen to his stories with an incredulous sort of disbelief but knowing they were true.  It was like he’d grown up a century earlier than my mother who was reared in Dallas.  A couple of years ago a hardware store opened up close to us and urban farmers were thrilled.  They carried organic, were “mom and pop” and even had chickens.  Pictured here is George.  George is a prize winning rooster who is very vain and KNOWS he’s good looking.  He has sired as many offspring as he has won awards.  I love patronizing small businesses, as I have one myself, and the little one and I always enjoy it when we can hear George and watch him strut his stuff in all his glory.  I promise every time I tell him how handsome he is he puffs his chest out out even more.  When we go inside I cannot help but be reminded of my father.  Things do not seem so different, with feed sacks and chickens and fertilizer.  Every Native person knows time is cyclical; for me there is a comfort in that.  So when I take my father’s only grandchild into the store I am reminded of his childhood and hope I am imparting the best of it to her.  American boxer Muhammad Ali once said,

“A rooster crows only when it sees the light.  Put him in the dark and he’ll never crow.  I have seen the light and I’m crowing.”

He sort of reminds me of George; what he lacks in humility he makes up for in braggadocio.  My Daddy was a humble man and taught me to be the same.  I want that for my girl as well.  One should never consider themselves “better than” … unless of course they’re George.