“John, do you like fried chickens?”

Not “chicken”.  Chickens.  With an “s”.

Even though it was almost 28 years ago I can still hear those words, spoken with a slight German accent by Bob, whom I had just met two days before.  He was probably in his mid-fifty’s then … twice my age,  powerfully built, with hair starting to gray around the edges.  Eyes that just came alive when he smiled.   Which was often.

I was a young project engineer, working on a remote job site in Batesville, Indiana overseeing the installation of a rather state-of-the-art industrial control system on a custom-built machine for a metalworking production line. Nothing exactly like it had ever been done before, and if it worked, it would open up interesting new markets for the company I was working for.  It used fiber-optic communication between different parts of the overall machine,  back when that was a very new and golly-gee whizbang sort of thing.

My customer, the largest employer in the area, had a skilled electrical and mechanical staff in-house, so rather than take a crew of our own, we’d arranged to work with their own personnel.   I was to be the “Working Supervisor” on the project.   The actual supervisor of the shop, Bob, was of German descent, like so many folks in that area of Indiana. A real “salt-of-the-earth” guy with the aforementioned broad smile and a monstrously big and firm handshake that nearly shut down circulation to your fingers.

I immediately liked Bob, due in no small part to the fact that my own dad had a very similar job as supervisor of the electric shop at the plant that was the largest employer in MY small hometown in Missouri. Though Bob was younger than my father, I could quite easily imagine that had the two of them ever met, they would have hit it off and had a lot to talk about.

On the day I met Bob, I was 27 years old, still a wet-behind-the-ears kid, and not feeling terribly confident about what I was doing there.  Oh, the “techie” part of it was no problem.  But the responsibility to perform under pressure and on deadline, while supervising people who were older and more experienced than me was something new.  I’d done other automation projects previously but this was my first time on a remote site as a project manager, expected to take charge and just “get it done”.

I was feeling more than a little out-of-place in a town where I knew no one other than the handful of folks I’d just met on the job site. As I mentioned, there are a lot of people of German descent in the area, and their German heritage is important to them.  An integral part of their identity.

Just north of Batesville there’s a small village named Oldenburg, with fascinating old-world architecture and a heritage all it’s own.

In addition to Bob, there were a couple of guys working on the project pretty much full time with me. Bob, even though he had other duties, was checking in from time to time just to make sure they weren’t running rough-shod over this kid. They weren’t. They were great guys, and we were getting along fine.

On the first day of the project, when the whistle blew for their lunch break, the two guys with whom I was working most closely asked me if I had lunch plans. “No, I think I’ll just run out and grab a sandwich” I told them. I was thinking of heading out towards the Interstate junction and finding some Golden Arches or something similar.

“Nonsense! We going to The Brau Haus in Oldenburg! Come on with us.”

“Okay, sure” I said and we headed out.

Not Bob though, he stayed behind and ate cabbage soup.

The two other guys laughed and explained that Bob ALWAYS had cabbage soup for lunch.

So the three of us drove over to Oldenburg. The Brau Haus was a great little German bar/restaurant with a mix of traditional German fare and “down-home” cooking. I had a big heavy plate of German food. The guys were apparently at least semi-regulars because they were on a first-name basis with the waitress and nearly everyone who happened by our table. Though I didn’t know it just yet, I’d be eating lunch there for about the next ten days in a row, and would savor each day’s choice better than the one from the day before.

Oldenburg, as of this writing, has a population of less than 700.   Back then it was surely about the same.   I learned that Oldenburg had been founded by German Settlers in the early 1800’s,  and is known as the “Village of Spires” because of its churches and religious educational institutions.   The “Sisters of St. Francis of Oldenburg” was founded here by Mother Theresa Hackelmeier, and went on to start Catholic schools all across the Midwest.   One of the schools they founded was for orphaned black children in segregated Indianapolis, one of the first such schools in the country.  Oldenburg still has many old stone and brick structures, clapboard houses, buildings with tin facades, cornices and ornamental stonework.  It also has many bilingual (English and German)  street signs.

At the end of the first day on the job site, I bid them all goodbye for the day and made my way over to my downtown Batesville hotel.

I was staying at the Sherman House in downtown Batesville, which first opened it’s doors to guests in November of 1852. The hotel looked like a Bavarian Lodge, and was owned in the 1980’s by the same company that owned the factory where I was working.   I enjoyed reading some of the things posted in hotel about it’s history, and looking at the old photographs.  From the hotel’s website: “Originally the hotel bore another name, believed to have been The Brinkman House. During many changes of ownership in the early years, someone renamed the hotel at the time of General Sherman’s contributions to victory in the War Between the States”

There is basically nothing to do in Batesville (or so I thought) on a weeknight, so I stayed in the hotel, ate at the in-house hotel restaurant (more excellent German Food).  Afterward, I walked around town, and admired the architecture of some of the old buildings downtown, and the churches that were just a block or so off of the town’s main business district.  Then I went back to the hotel, read for a while and turned in early. Next day was pretty much the same, Oldenburg for lunch, hotel for supper, crashed hard and early.  But I think I did venture a little further afield in my after-dinner explorations and saw more of the town.

At the end of the third work day, as I was packing up to leave the factory to head back to the hotel, Bob approached me and asked me that question that opened this narrative ….

“John, do you like fried chickens?”

I was fairly certain he MUST have said “fried chicken”, but I didn’t think much of it.

“Sure, I like fried chicken”.

“Good then. Batesville is famous for its fried chickens!” he laughed.  (There’s that “s” again.)   “Come on, supper’s on me tonight.”

We went out to the parking lot, and he led the way over to his truck. He fired it up and we headed out of the parking lot, and off in a direction I hadn’t been yet, out of town.  Bob made his way out onto a blacktop road.

As we drove along, we made small talk. He told me he liked to fish, and asked if I fished. I assured him I’d grown up fishing from the time I was a kid, and he wanted to know what we fished for (and how we went about it) in Tennessee.  He was a night-crawler guy.  I told him of the nights growing up in Missouri that I’d sit on the river bank with my brother and, with those night-crawlers we’d reign in the catfish.    Bob avowed that “Catfish are some good eating!”    Yes they are.  Yes indeed they are.

He asked if I’d been “… in the service?” I explained that I hadn’t, and he told me he was a former Marine. I had no problem visualizing that at all.   Square jawed, and he always seemed ready to snap to attention …. or into action if circumstances required.

Even with the slight accent, I found him to be very easy to talk to, and an extraordinarily nice man. He drove for probably fifteen or twenty minutes.  Then suddenly,  we pulled into the parking lot of a little cinder-block building painted white, with a big sign in front illuminated by a single bulb shining down.

The sign simply said “Red’s”.

Bob announced our arrival. “Red’s. Great chickens.”  (There’s that “s” again.)  Something about the way he said it made me think he might have said exactly the same thing even if he’d been alone in the truck.

We got out of the truck and walked in, and were instantly met with a chorus of folks hollering out, “Bob!”

Think of the choruses of “Norm!” on Cheers. That’s what it was, except “Bob!”.

Obviously, he’d been there before. I looked around. Neon beer signs for various brands, abundantly scattered on the walls.   A juke box, a couple of pinball machines, and a pool table. Several tables with patrons in various states of getting unwound from the work day, drinking beer, eating chicken. Or chickens.

Though there were several tables available, Bob took a seat at the bar and motioned for me to sit down. The waitress came over and greeted Bob.   He said, “This is my friend, John, bring us a pitcher”

She winked.  “Hi John. What are you doing with this old coot?”

Bob smiled, and she started filling a pitcher of beer from a tap.  I think it was Blatz.  No question about whether I wanted beer or not, it was just assumed. Of course, of COURSE you drink beer at Red’s. Beer and chickens. Sheesh.

What ELSE would you have at a place where they’re “famous for fried chickens” and where there was a German heritage and where they had that much neon hanging on the walls?

Then Bob turned to me and asked the SECOND surprising question of the evening.  Again in that thick German accent.

“John, how many chickens can you eat?”  (That pesky “s”)

I was pretty hungry, so I said …  “Um…. uh, I don’t know … I guess probably half a chicken?”

Half a chicken. That’s a wing, a thigh, a leg, and a breast, right? Four pieces.  If there were a couple of side dishes, a decent meal for hungry guy.

He leaned back and roared in laughter as if I’d said something hilarious.

The waitress came over to where we were sitting again, and asked, “So what’ll it be?”

“Start us off with two fried chickens.”

That’s right, he said “START US OFF” with TWO fried chickens. That’s all he said.  No “And we’ll have side orders of fries, slaw, some hush-puppies”, etc.    I guess that was just assumed.

One chicken for him, one for me. I chuckled and thought, ok, so I’ll have left overs.

We drank our beers and talked a little bit about the project I was working on. Pretty soon the waitress comes out of the kitchen in the back, and sat down a platter that made my eyes bulge out. Despite no mention of the sides, there was a mound of fries, a big bowl of slaw, some green beans, and basket of hush-puppies.

And along with it all was the biggest pile of fried chicken parts I’d ever seen stacked on a plate.

Biology wasn’t my best subject in school, but my math is pretty good.  So that would be FOUR breasts, FOUR thighs, FOUR legs, FOUR wings. She gave us each a plate and some silverware, and hurried off to tend to something else.

Bob reached in a grabbed a wing. Then he spooned up some beans and coleslaw, and a few fries. Starting slow I figured.

Then he said the THIRD thing that nearly floored me that evening.

“I pretty much only eat the wings. The rest is yours.  Eat up.”

Huh?

I sort of laughed a bit, until I realized he was dead serious.  Only the wings.

I just stared at him.

Ok, whatever.

I grabbed a breast and some fries and beans, and a couple of the hush-puppies, and went to work.

Maybe it was that I was tired of two days of German Food back in town. Maybe I was just extra hungry. Maybe it was all the neon.   Maybe it was that we were already half-way through our second pitcher of Blatz on empty stomachs.

All I know is that with the very first bite …. OMG.   It only took that one bite, and I was ruined …. RUINED ….. for ordinary fried chicken. It was hot, juicy, tender, and SO flavorful.

Before long I had powered through that first piece, and grabbed a leg. The waitress had put an empty metal bucket by us on the bar for bones, and we started filling it up.  Bob with wing bones gnawed completely clean, and me with whatever was left of the piece I had just been eating.

With each new addition, the bucket would give out a muffled little “ding”, and pile inside grew and grew.

The chickens were perfectly seasoned … spicy but not TOO spicy.  Maybe just a hint of cayenne or some other kind of heat?  The pieces were all perfectly breaded.  Enough to be enjoyable, not enough so that the breading took precedence over the bird. Remarkably, though the meat was moist and juicy, the breading didn’t seen particularly greasy. And it was all oh so good. Especially with the ice cold beer working it’s amazing magical counterpoint to the hot chicken.

It wasn’t just “good”.   It was DAMN good.

Whoever was back there in the kitchen … maybe “Red”?  … didn’t just know how to cook chicken. He (or she) was Michelangelo, busily creating in the hen-house version of the Sistine Chapel.  DaVinci with a finely-feathered Mona Lisa.  Ben Hogan with a clucking 1 Iron.  Muhammad Ali standing over a downed and plucked-clean Sonny Liston, but brandishing a shaker of special seasoning rather than a circling boxing glove.

This was not just fried chicken.  Er.., “chickens”.  These were THE very definition of fried chickens.

Chickens that had been bent to the will of their master.   I imagined a line of plump pullets at Red’s back door.  “Pick me!”  “No, ME!”  “No, cook ME next!!”     Surely any group of chickens would gladly give their all for this honor.

I’ve been to the flagship KFC store in Corbin Kentucky.   I can promise you as far as I was concerned that old man Sanders from Kentucky could go over Niagara in a big red and white bucket in his white clown suit with that Kentucky Colonel bow tie.   THIS was fried chicken done right.

I was well beyond the point of being utterly stuffed, NEVER having eaten so much chicken in my life. (And seldom having consumed so much beer.)  We were near the bottom of our **mumblety-mumble-th** pitcher of beer, and the pile of food was down to something that looked like it could still serve a small family, when Bob says to the waitress. “Bring us another chicken and one more pitcher.”

I just looked at him. I’m quite sure the look on my face said it all.

What. The. Hell ??

He leaned back and roared with laughter again and said, “John-boy, they don’t allow leftovers in here. We can’t leave until it’s all gone.  Eat up.”

So I did.

By the time we left, probably two and a half hours after we’d arrived, the pile of bones was nothing less than epic. Despite his admonition that they didn’t allow leftovers, we still had fries and some slaw on the platter.

But no chickens.

Bob had eaten six wings.

I’d eaten the rest.    That’s the honest truth.   That’s six breasts.  Six legs.  Six thighs.   Eighteen pieces of chicken.

I was not ashamed.   I was sorta proud.  And not a little awed at myself.

Bob paid up and we headed out.

I was more than a little wobbly, though I’m not sure if it was more from the beer or the added weight of three (wingless) fried chickens.

Bob was steady as a rock.

When he dropped me back at the parking lot of the factory to get my car, he said he’d enjoyed it and then, “See you bright and early!”.

And he did. Early anyway.  “Bright” was up for argument I think.

I was on that project there for about ten days. My last night in town, Bob and I and one of the other guys headed once again out to Red’s and did the same thing all over again.

I’ve thought back on that first night at Red’s with Bob many times through the years, and I love to tell the story of the “Night We Bested the Chickens.”

I don’t remember that much about the specifics of the actual engineering job we did that week. We did get the machine running.   I only worked for that company a couple of years.

But more importantly, what  I do remember about that trip was the town, the food, and the people I met and worked with.  And I remember how they made me feel welcome and at ease.

More than that though, I learned three really important lessons.

First, ALWAYS eat “local” whenever you can as you travel from town to town.   If not, you’re going to miss some of the best part of what “the road” has to offer.

Second,  even when the “goal” may be to get to the end of the project, the trip, or the job … to accomplish that thing you’ve set out to do …  take time to experience the riches of the places you encounter along the way.   Here is a verifiable truth:  Each town has its own unique “sense of place”.   If you open your eyes, you’ll find amazing stories in every town you visit, small and large.

Third, I learned that the very richest part of ANY journey is without a doubt the “ordinary” people you meet.  Take time to connect with people.  Engage them in conversation.   Authenticity in relationships … even the most casual and fleeting of relationships …. is priceless.

What an amazing gift when people share their stories with you.  What an amazing gift when they are present as new stories are being written.

“Sharing of ourselves and allowing others to do the same is ultimately our most valuable gift to one another.”  – Dan Wilkins.

love,
John

P.S.   The answer to “How many chickens can you eat” is apparently 3, though I would not presume there is any way that I could hit that mark today.    I’ve looked online for “Red’s” and can find no mention of it whatsoever.   I did however find Bob’s obituary.  He died in 2012 at the age of 76.   And that makes me more than a little sad.  He was a grandpa and a family man.  The salt of the earth. 

And he was a wing-slayer without equal in my heart.

 I never saw him again after that trip, but I wish I would have had the opportunity to tell him how much that trip to Southeast Indiana had meant to me.  How much it STILL means to me.  I don’t know if he would have remembered me or the “Night of the Chickens”.  

But I remember.