This is old blowers and I'm on a do a podcast today for you. Well, I'm going to start today. It's going to take me three or four weeks to tell this story. See, my girl Emily got the talking to me and she said, what you've got to do.
If you're going to do a story and start at the first of it and tell it to the end without going off on all these side tracks. And she said that was a what you call a documentation podcast. And so she helped me with this one and she gave me some of the words. She said, Daddy said, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but said, you're vocabulary ain't that big and vocabulary.
She told me was, you know, the words that she that she used and you talking and she's right. I don't like I told you I ain't got much of a education, but anyway, so she helped me with this podcast and she gave me some of the words that I use in this podcast. I didn't want you to think it that you know that I know the words because I am. I'm honest, I wouldn't try to be something I ain't, but she helped me with this one.
And so what I'm going to tell you about is this this far that they had up here at school. And but I'm going to start at the very beginning of the story to tell you what happened. And so I'm going to have to back up about 70 years or maybe 80 years to tell you how this started and and the whole story from the time it got started until the time the far happened about a month ago. So that's going to be the podcast and it's going to take me.
Oh, a bunch of I'm going to have to put it into a bunch of parts because it's a long story. So I just want you to know what I'm doing and this podcast is called the inferno and inferno. That's the word that Emily gave me. I just called it the far and she said, well, now it's more than a far.
She said, and it was it's one of the worst things that I've ever seen. So she said, call it an inferno, daddy. So that's what I'm naming this podcast the inferno. And it's going to you can if you want to listen to all the parts, then you can find out what happened down here because it was one of the most things that ever I've ever seen in my life.
Okay. Now if I'm going to tell you this story, I'm going to have to back up about 70 or 80 years back when when I was a little old bitty boy. See, this school up here, the schoolhouse has been here probably over a hundred years. And at the first they they dreamed this swamp up here to make this community, you know, it's just little little little little community back then.
And they set aside a part of the land for a schoolhouse and most of it was woods and and a lot of people was was complaining about it because they said they didn't need that much land for a schoolhouse. But my my Emily said they was a first sighted in doing that because, you know, they have built a school lots of different times. And every time it got bigger and bigger. And so whoever whoever give that land in the first place, you know, he planned for the future plan that he must have had some way of knowing how it was going to be or or maybe he was just lucky.
I don't know. But he he given this land or somebody did and they they built a little old bitty country school up here and it's been built over rebuilt at least four times that I know of. And every time they built a new school, well, it got bigger, you know, because the number of kids was was a grader and and so the school they built a bigger school every time they built it. Well, I'm going to go back as far back as I can remember, which is about eight years and I was a little old bitty boy at that time and they had a little old country school and the principal was was old man, Tyson.
And he was a good man. They say I didn't he would have he would have been my principal if I had gone to school. But of course, as I told you before, I wasn't able to I didn't get no opportunity to go to school, but he would have been my principal. If I if I had gone to school down there and Mr.
Tyson was awful good man, they say, but and he he liked the kids and the kids liked him. But you know, you know people nobody is perfect. I mean, all of us has got our strong points and our weak points. Well, Mr.
Tyson took it into his head that what he was going to do was build a chicken house and raise chickens so that he could have eggs for the kids down there. And you know, and he would have chicken, you know, fried chicken and and and that would be cheaper than buying eggs and chickens on the market. And a lot of people told him that that wasn't right. A lot of people told him they say anyway that a lot of people down here told him that that ain't, you know, good business.
But he, you know, Mr. Tyson, he was like I say, he wasn't perfect. And so he thought that would be a good idea. And so he he got some money and he put up or had him put up a chicken house down here way back in the woods back then.
It was a little bitty. I mean, it was a, you know, way back behind the school and they put up a great big chicken house and when they just put the, you know, the skeleton outside of the building up and then he had the sharp classes, boys from the shop classes come in there and, you know, do the the painting and put up the what they call fiberboard. Now I don't know what they use back then. But it's called fiberboard now and they done the painting and they put the lights up, wired the, wired the chicken house and then put up a little laboratory back there for the, for the kids.
And they, he bought a bunch of chickens and the boys built cages for them. And so they started gathering eggs and the boys was assigned to gather the eggs and they took them to the kitchen and they had eggs and, you know, they when you, when you buy chickens, you know, you got a. Certain number of roosters where they used to eat the roosters, you know, fried them and they had fried chicken and, and he thought he was doing a good thing. And that went on down there for old about, I don't know, probably 20 years and, you know, the school got bigger and Mr.
Tyson, old men, Tyson, hard, a business manager named Mr. and he was a business manager back there and, and he was supposed to make sure that they were spending the money as best they could, you know, they, they was spending it what he called responsibly, you know. And so he, he done a lot of things and, and you know, made some changes down there. But one thing that he done was that he said he was going to put a pencil to that chicken raisin to see if that was a good business practice or not.
And so he took, he wrote down, you know, what they was spending for, for chicken feed and, and what it was costing them to, you know, take care of the chickens and, and about how much you had to pay for eggs at the store. And, and how much you had to pay for chicken at the store and, you know, he, he was a business manager and he took all them, them, them figures into account. And he went to old men Tyson and he said, now Mr. Tyson, he said, you hard me for a business manager.
And he said, I'm not trying to tell you what to do. But he said, I put a pencil to this chicken raisin and I can tell you right now that you can get eggs wholesale for about 50 cents a dozen. Now that was back then, of course. And he said, it's costing you about 80 cents a dozen for feeding them chickens and, and raising them and getting them eggs.
And he said, you, you losing 30 cents a dozen for ever dozen eggs that you fix. And he said, I'm just telling you, he said, I'm not trying to be a wise guy. I'm just trying to tell you that I put the pencil through it. And he said, I'm just going to give it to you for your own information and you can do whatever you want to do.
Well, Mr. Tyson, he was a, he was a smart man. He really wasn't. He knowed that Mr.
Burkett, you knew more about business than he did. And he said, well, he studied bad for day or two. And he went in and said, Mr. Burkett, he said, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention.
And he said, the only thing for us to do would be to get rid of the chickens. And he said, you know, I was wrong. I never should have bought them chickens in the first place. So they, they got rid of the chickens and they started buying the eggs wholesale.
And when they wanted fried chicken, they got the chicken wholesale and they saved a whole lot of money. So that tells you where this, and I'm leading up to what happened to the chicken house after they closed it. And that's going to be in the next part of this podcast. You know, I told you this was a documentation podcast that my girl Emily told me to do.
So she told me to start back at the first and that's what I did. I went back to where they built the chicken house and now I'm going to tell you what happened to the chicken house after they quit using it.