All Ducked Up
Spring of 1964, Scottsville, Kentucky, in the days following Easter....
I don't know how the tradition began of giving the gift of ducks at Easter. As far back as I can remember, and up until my brother and I were into our teens, baby ducks were an annual arrival at our house. I seem to remember that the parents bought them at Marsh's Variety Store on the public square. Seems like they may have also gotten them at the feed store. For the life of me, I can't figure out how this honors the resurrection of our Lord and Savior. But the tradition goes back even further than my youth.
During a recent conversation with my mother, I was reminded of the story of how a suitor of hers in high school attempted to woo her with the gift of a duck. It was her senior year at Allen County-Scottsville High School. Danny Oliver (whom I do not know) gave her a duck for Easter. As well, her best friend Sherry also received a duck (from a different suitor). Their lockers were adjacent in the school building--just outside of Noble Allen's classroom. This would become the ducks' temporary homes. (When I attended the same school building, that classroom had become Joe Cornwell's--who, incidentally, graduated with Momma in 1964, and was a history teacher when I was a student there some 20-odd years later.)
Again, in the category of "why in the world," both Momma and Sherry decided to raise their ducklets in their lockers, as I have already mentioned. Momma remembers it being about 6 weeks before the odor of the ducks' natural biological waste products got to the point that the school's administration ordered that the "ducks be gone." Momma is a little hazy about what happened to Sherry's duck, but Momma took hers home and turned it out at Great-grandma's barn where it immediately took up with a family of piglets. To this day, Momma remains adamant in her claim that her duck came to think it was a pig. It would go to slop with the pigs, it would sleep with the pigs, it would swim with the pigs--as she tells it, the duck would have been a pig if only it had been able to generate bacon.
She doesn't really remember what happened to the duck. Livestock had a way of "disappearing" in the charge of Great-grandma. And by this time, Momma had gone off to college in Bowling Green. It would have been very easy for Great-grandma to devise a "disappearing act" for the duck. (Peking Duck? Duck a l'orange? Foie gras?)
I mention that the suitor was Danny Oliver. That was germane because she chose that name for the duck as well. Never the overly-creative or artistic type, I suppose this seemed sufficient to her for naming the duck. And eventually, I remember that Marsh's Variety Store stopped selling ducks. I think it must have had something to do with the fact that the baby ducks were on display near the entrance of the store, right next to the lunch counter. That couldn't have made the health inspector too happy--but nobody ever caught "duck flu" in Scottsville.
I don't know how the tradition began of giving the gift of ducks at Easter. As far back as I can remember, and up until my brother and I were into our teens, baby ducks were an annual arrival at our house. I seem to remember that the parents bought them at Marsh's Variety Store on the public square. Seems like they may have also gotten them at the feed store. For the life of me, I can't figure out how this honors the resurrection of our Lord and Savior. But the tradition goes back even further than my youth.
During a recent conversation with my mother, I was reminded of the story of how a suitor of hers in high school attempted to woo her with the gift of a duck. It was her senior year at Allen County-Scottsville High School. Danny Oliver (whom I do not know) gave her a duck for Easter. As well, her best friend Sherry also received a duck (from a different suitor). Their lockers were adjacent in the school building--just outside of Noble Allen's classroom. This would become the ducks' temporary homes. (When I attended the same school building, that classroom had become Joe Cornwell's--who, incidentally, graduated with Momma in 1964, and was a history teacher when I was a student there some 20-odd years later.)
Again, in the category of "why in the world," both Momma and Sherry decided to raise their ducklets in their lockers, as I have already mentioned. Momma remembers it being about 6 weeks before the odor of the ducks' natural biological waste products got to the point that the school's administration ordered that the "ducks be gone." Momma is a little hazy about what happened to Sherry's duck, but Momma took hers home and turned it out at Great-grandma's barn where it immediately took up with a family of piglets. To this day, Momma remains adamant in her claim that her duck came to think it was a pig. It would go to slop with the pigs, it would sleep with the pigs, it would swim with the pigs--as she tells it, the duck would have been a pig if only it had been able to generate bacon.
She doesn't really remember what happened to the duck. Livestock had a way of "disappearing" in the charge of Great-grandma. And by this time, Momma had gone off to college in Bowling Green. It would have been very easy for Great-grandma to devise a "disappearing act" for the duck. (Peking Duck? Duck a l'orange? Foie gras?)
I mention that the suitor was Danny Oliver. That was germane because she chose that name for the duck as well. Never the overly-creative or artistic type, I suppose this seemed sufficient to her for naming the duck. And eventually, I remember that Marsh's Variety Store stopped selling ducks. I think it must have had something to do with the fact that the baby ducks were on display near the entrance of the store, right next to the lunch counter. That couldn't have made the health inspector too happy--but nobody ever caught "duck flu" in Scottsville.
posted by Michael Vernon at Monday, June 08, 2009
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