Gallus Domesticus cannot fly...

cooped up with chickens

“Man With Chickens, North Thibodaux, LA” ©1978 Rick Olivier

Chickens (Gallus Domesticus) are the world’s most common barnyard animal. I’m going to raise some one day because we eat a fair amount of chicken around here. I like to marinate mine overnight in Lea&Perrins, salt, pepper, and spices. My grandmother, who lived just one fence away from us, always had a few in her tiny back yard. I can’t recall if she had a coop or not but she must have. Had they roosted in her fig or plum trees they would have been assaulted by the numerous ragged-ear tomcats on the block. One of my most vivid pre-K images is “M’Maw” wringing the neck of a chicken with one quick snap. She was a feisty old Cajun, famed for her “tarte a la bouille”:

“Edma Morales Olivier, White Castle, LA” ©1976 Rick Olivier

Thirty-five years later I would taste the most exquisite chicken gumbo-of-a-lifetime at Cajun musician D.L. Menard’s house made by his wife, Louella, (only hours after I took this portrait). When I asked her secret she pointed to the back yard and said: “fresh chicken”.

These photographs are from a series of portraits I made in college

I had an Olympus OM-1 and the 50mm f1.4 normal lens. I’d walk around my small college city, Thibodaux LA, and look for people to photograph. I’d usually just yell: “hey! can I take your picture?” Naturally, some people refused, but most were just curious about who this boy in a t-shirt was and they were willing to talk about it. I’ve always kept the memorable Diane Arbus quote in my head: “photography is a way of paying attention and most people want to be paid attention to” when asking for permission to photograph someone. It tends to tamp down my insecurity in asking. We still had Agfa Portriga chlorobromide silver-gel paper back then, a gorgeous green-black darkroom paper that, when combined with cold-light printing, produced a shocking range of tones. There is no replacement that even comes close.

Follow Me Chicken sounds like

a smokin’ hot recipe from South Louisiana but it’s actually the title of an album I shot (and one you can still buy) many years ago for my buddy, Nathan Williams, with Rounder Records. Back then I did a lot of hand-coloring with Marshall’s Photo Oils on matte surface prints. Not a great reproduction, below, but you get the idea. The album has a Caribbean influence, Kenyatta Simon played djembe. Speaking of chicken music, one of Ry Cooder’s absolute best albums is appropriately titled, Chicken Skin Music. He brings in Gabby Pahinui for the slack-key guitar, and Flaco Jimenez for la musica pollo!

So you wanna raise some chickens

Big chicken coops were also much more common 30, 40, years ago. You’d see a whole community of chickens in someone’s back yard. Coops are pretty easy to build yourself. This ol’boy here builds a nice one. Chickens, like the rest of us, benefit from having a bit of elbow room and feel safety in numbers. There are many ways to fail at Chicken Whispering! You might go hog, er, I mean chicken-wild, and decide to raise chicks so don’t blame me when your city neighbors call the noise police on your cocky rooster because, as Sonny Boy Williamson sang, Rooster crow errrrly in the mornin’. If you want to really rock out and drive the neighbors apoplectic turn Hasil Adkin’s Chicken Walk up to eleven on the hi-fi and chug-a-lug a fifth of Early Times! Yup, I’d call that a chicken party.

Don’t be a jerk, eat some

Jamaicans have created a most amazing variation on barbeque chicken, the world famous “jerk” chicken, though most any meat can be jerked…wait, “shut up” (as Ricky Gervais would say) “I don’t care..I just don’t care”. We’ll grill up a mess of jerk marinated in Walkerswood but it doesn’t really get to the heart of jerk on my grill. One of the secrets of jerk is that it’s grilled over a “pimento” wood fire. Jerk (supposedly) originated at Boston Bay in northeast Jamaica (video below). If you ever go to Jamaica the coolest part of the island is that northeast corner, in my opinion. It’s very “country” and the people are laid back much like you find in South Louisiana. Take a route taxi (what the locals use, much cheaper) out to Boston Bay for some chicken and Red Stripe, head back west and get off at Fairy Hill. From there it’s a five minute walk down the hill to my favorite beach in Jamaica, Winnifred Beach. Kriss, Rasta! With a spare box of jerk chicken on that beach you’ll think you finally made it to heaven.

Got a favorite chicken story? Leave it in the comments. Thanks for reading and if you know someone who would enjoy Ark Hive please forward/share this with them.

R.