Pokin' Fun
Poultry made easy
'Doc' Blakely

A fifth grade teacher was quizzing her students about cultures. She asked a red headed, freckled-face boy, "What's a Hindu?" The kid said, "Lay eggs?"

My friend Morris is one of those mischievous types although he is nearly all grown up today and recently retired.

A bunch of us were out for lunch one Sunday when the subject came up of strange jobs that we used to have before we settled on being the best, most respected and irreplaceable person in our chosen profession. Some of the guys were even telling true stories and this is one of them.

Morris didn't know what he wanted to be as a teenager so he would take whatever job came his way, looking for that "magic bullet" that would catapult him into fame and fortune. It seemed only natural that the job of short order cook on an offshore oil rig would be the start of his empire.

The oil company that hired him asked if he had experience.

He said, "Oh, most certainly. I've cooked for 20 years and studied under the great chefs of the finest cuisine." At age 17 you could say that he was inventive, if not bordering on cocky. The oil patch also likes fellows with a sense of humor.

They hired him and told him that the salt air and hard work made men hungry in the Gulf of Mexico and he should go about his work to keep them happy and do it with a smile on his face. Morris replied in culinary terms, "Piece of cake."

The one golden rule the company had was to feed men all they wanted to eat - but you better eat all that you take because waste food thrown overboard attracts sharks and in those days everybody arrived and departed by boat, living on the site for a week at a time, three crews, so it was a 24/7 operation. A man tossed out of a boat by a sudden wave wanted a reasonable chance to get back in without walking on water.

The first day on the job a big, burly guy asked Morris if he could have six scrambled eggs for breakfast. "Yes sir, coming right up." For good measure he turned his back and secretly gave him seven.

The next day Big Boy asked for the same. Morris scrambled eight with a smile. Every day he added one more egg. He had the guy up to eleven and was going for twelve when on the sixth morning Morris said, "Yes, sir. Do you want six scrambled eggs again?"

The guy said, "Well, maybe, but first let me look at the size of those eggs."

There's probably a moral to this story, but the only thing that comes to mind is that no matter how much a chicken eats it never gets fat in the face.

Doc Blakely is an internationally known humorist and motivational speaker who lives in Wharton.