CHICKENS' BUTTS AND COCONUTS by Danny Maness

Me, Dee-Dee (mean little red haired sister), and sister Nancy.

Me in front, and my mean little red haired sister right behind me in bibs.

My earliest recollection is of my wicked, red-haired sister
trying to kill me. In her twisted little mind she came up with a
devious plan to starve me to death. She would grab my baby
bottle, run and smash it! I guess I should really thank her,
because I always suspected Mom of poisoning my milk.
This playground incident will be etched in my brain
forever. Remember the movie Rebecca? Remember Miss
Danvers and that strange look in her eyes. (If you haven’t
seen the movie, go and rent it now, We will wait). O.K. Now
we all know about that strange look in Miss Danver's eyes.
My evil red-haired sister had that look when she said, “the
swings, the swings, you must walk in front of the swings”.
Well, back then, swings were lethal weapons. The seats
were made of two-inch thick,, oak boards with sharp pointed
corners. I, in my innocent youth, trusted the red-haired
demon and walked in front of that instrument of death. Last
thing I remember, they were putting fourteen stitches in my
head. But, ha! I survived! The ruthless, red-head’s plan didn’t
work. More important, my brain still functions nominally.
The “projects”. Yeah, that’s what we called ‘em. Sometimes
just the “jects” when were short on time. The “projects” were
early communes. We usually had, at any given time, 2000 people
in our apartment alone. On holidays it was worse. On one New
Year’s Eve we had to order 27,000 White Castle hamburgers.
Then we couldn’t get to the bathroom because of the boxes. Of
course, that meant we – well, let’s not go there.
When we moved to the suburbs I was surprised our
family only had eight people.