King Condor

It started with the Goose. Everyone knew the Goose, even if you only knew of her in passing. My siblings and I didn't personally know her that well. Though I visited more than a little and less than a lot, I was younger and she was an older woman with a lot of fowl. But the stories provided my prologue. Aunt Goose - my great aunt, the partially self-proclaimed, partially recognized family matriarch - lived by her own rules. The family called her Goose because they joked that she quacked too much and was foul-mouthed. She spoke loudly, laughed loudly, argued loudly, loved loudly, handled business LOUDLY. That point was evident- and the fact her story was reminiscent of the nursery rhyme Mother Goose. Many believed that she had so many children that she didn't know what to do. She birthed twenty children, with thirteen living until adulthood. Maybe she didn't know at first. The loss of a child is hard to bear for any mother and sometimes she seemed to go elsewhere. Maybe nowhere. But maybe it inspired her to be the best mom she could be for the rest of her children and for me. And that she did.

Aunt "Goosey" - as I affectionately referred to her as, outside of her presence - lived in the area of Mississippi just east of where there was a Bible Belt Tri-State between the states of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, near the Big Black River. The Mighty Mississippi River split the border lines. For this reason, the area earned the name, "The MALT" - MAL for the three states and T being for the triangle and, the entire name, of course, the booze. She married Benji, the “Son of the South”: a successful bootlegger who was known for Benji's Heirloom Corn Whiskey, a milder version of the typical moonshine. Uncle Benjamin "Benji" Brine learned his illegal racket from the best: his mom and dad sharecropped and stole and ravaged whatever they could to ferment into liquor for the hard workers and has-beens and woulda-shoulda-couldas of the area. Their efforts - and the death of a nearby farmer and a grieving widow's money problems - allowed them to be able to purchase some acres of marshy land with a sizable pond fed by a small river. Or maybe it was a large creek - the story often changed.

And that is where Uncle Benji grew up and where he and Aunt Goosey would ultimately live. The farm raised chickens, had the pond teeming with the state's famous catfish, grew typical Southern vegetables like okra and greens and tomatoes and squash, and, of course, heirloom corn (cousin of the more well-known white or yellow corn). Since the farm wasn't large enough to have all the fancy equipment and bird feed and pesticides and fertilizers, the Brines had to use sustainable methods to survive: the fowl roamed free; the fowl fertilized the garden and the corn path (or they traded for manure) as well as rid them of pests; and the catfish consumed the excess corn. The fowl had their own living quarters. You can say that Aunt Goosey and Uncle Benji were trailblazers for organic farming. Probably could be said for most small Southern farmers during that time.

Aunt Goosey and Uncle Benji were like penguins: they mated for life. A harmony personified – beat and improvisation, and vice versa. Their love was palpable and it resulted in their large amount of progeny (though not uncommon to have many children at the time).

"What we do wit all these chirren?!", the legend touts that Uncle Benji exclaimed.

"Teach ‘em to work and put ‘em to work?!", Aunt Goosey retorted.

Uncle Benji sighed, "But of course. But, but how, Goose?"

Aunt Goosey had prepared the perfect response: "We raise birds. What's gud for duh goose is mo den fine for da gander."

I am not sure how Aunt Goosey had become such an ornithophile - liking every animal with feathers - but she indeed was. She had a plan: the family would become the premier place in the area for getting fowl or their eggs. Chicken, ducks, and, naturally, geese. Uncle Benji was skeptical, but he supported his wife's vision. He did it mostly because of his own bootlegging profits. Aunt Goosey put the plan and the kids to work.

As the years wore on, the Roaring 20's became the Great Depression leading to World War II and the Korean War and the Civil Rights Era, and Aunt Goosey's idea became a fortnight success. Sure, it had its ups and down, but "Folks gotta eat, right?", Aunt Goosey would purport to say.

While the farm remained successful, the times and health issues had whittled the Brine family down to three Brine children. One, the third oldest, Crane, the jack of all vocations and master entrepreneur. His first older siblings passed away at an early age, giving him the role of the oldest sibling and one of the middle children. So, he had a lot of responsibility and something to prove. Two, the baby boy, Hummie, the musician - the keyboardist and best fiddler on the east side of the MALT. People said that at night you could hear him in the entire Tri-State! Three, baby girl, Robin, the agricultural business accountant who worked for John Deere. She had always been great with numbers. She helped Aunt Goosey in the later years when the latter got old and Uncle Benji got sick. I vaguely remember all of this as I was chasing chickens and antagonizing ducks and geese (I don't advise it.) As they would say, “This Yankee boy think he in Disneyland.”

Then Uncle Benji passed away. None of the three wanted the land. They wanted to live their own lives. Growing up farming had exhausted them and they only had enough energy to become themselves - at least that is what cousin Hummie told as he strummed his version of his favorite spiritual jig, "You Gotta Move", one nice, clear summer night with the slightest of breezes:

"You may be high, you may be low.

You may be rich, yeah, you may be poor.

But when the Lord gets ready, you gotta move, you gotta move.

You may be old, you may be young.

You may be weak, you may be high-strung.

But when the good Lord gets ready, you gotta move, you gotta move."

So Aunt Goosey decided to hand it over to her favorite niece, my mom, Judy Bug. She offered it to her and she also refused. Who wants to be a farmer when you could be a Flower Child, Beatnik, or Black Panther in the late 60s? It was 1969 and I, just thirteen years old, spoke up and said more emphatically than a kid for an ice cream sundae: "I want the farm!"

Aunt Goosey, not so loud in her old age, smiled and said, "You sho, boy? What you know bout takin’ care of no farm?"

I excitedly gleamed, "I have visited and worked on your farm - well as much as a young boy can work since I was young boy, and I'm sure that I can learn from your workers. I mean, my cousins."

In an uncharacteristic show of seeming apathy, Aunt Goosey quietly signed off on my bold request, "Alright, but don't you lose my farm, boy. I'll return from da dead and getcha. Haunt cha!"

Aunt Goosey died when I turned sixteen years old. To her promise and my surprise, she actually left me the farm and the land! She had also left a note:

"Da one who gets the land gets da Bible of Goose."

I knew Aunt Goosey to be a God-fearing woman, but there was no such Bible or book for that matter, to my knowledge. I put it out of my mind and prepared to visit the property with my parents. I expected complete disarray. The caretakers had kept it status quo. Not as many chickens and ducks and geese than I remembered as a child. The heirloom corn still grew well though. The garden well-maintained.

As we went through Aunt Goosey's effects, we realized that Aunt Goosey was a bit of a hoarder; she had clothes and trinkets and quilts and books and pictures everywhere. However, she only had one Bible in her bedroom - one unusually large Bible. For her to be a devout Christian, it seemed odd to not have more. So I opened the Bible and there it was in a carved out place in the book: another book, the Bible of the Goose.

My mom saw what was happening and inquired, "Connie, what is that?' My last name was Condor(another bird that mates for life and hustles for what it needs, ironically), and everyone called me Connie. I never got it.

I thumbed the Bible of the Goose: best practices for raising the fowl individually and together; best crops for the garden; how to grow the best heirloom corn; Uncle Benji's "patentable" heirloom corn whiskey recipe; the Brine's other bootleg recipes, key contacts and customers, and the nosy neighbors to know and those to avoid.

Most importantly, at least with my initial read, was Aunt Goosey's famous (and secret) recipe for the Bird Benji - a take on the Eggs Benedict that Aunt Goosey had developed after a chance casino trip to Biloxi, where she had tried the famous breakfast dish. She lost money in her foray into gambling, but gained a golden egg. Poached fowl eggs, pulled breast and leg meat from the same fowl, and hot water heirloom cornbread with traditional Southern gravy. Usually with duck fat instead of lard or shortening. My mouth watered as I read it.

And then came the game changer: "Get dat box in da goose coop." And there was a key.

I searched the goose coop for what seemed like hours. No box. I asked one of the caretakers, Cousin Johnnie Blue, if he had seen a box.

"Johnnie, have you seen any box in the goose coop?"

"Uh, yeah, it's in da house. In da kitchen cubbard."

I headed to open this mystery box. I opened it and there it was: around $20,000 in cash and US Treasury bonds. Before I knew it, I yelled, "My God, Aunt Goosey don' left me a nest egg!" I returned to the black book and it turned out Aunt Goosey stashed some of her and Uncle Benji's money away and, as some older Southerners do, saved money that was sent from children, grandchildren, and the like. Because "they was po and didn't have no money." Yet, they always had money. And Aunt Goosey and Uncle Benji fell in line with the same ritual. The money was enough to buy additional adult and infant fowl; plant perennial and insect attracting flora (plants, flowers, and trees); and small fish, amphibians, and insects.

Years later, befit with some losses and a lot of hard work and the goodwill of my great aunt, my inheritance launched the empire of Mister Condor, the King of Southern Fowl; Goosey Brine Food and Spirits, Inc.;and the legacy of Aunt Goosey and Uncle Benji. We started as a family business and continue as a family business to this day, even as we grow today. I felt humbled to carry on her and Uncle Benji's tradition. In the spirit of the Aesop fable, the Goose Who Laid The Golden Egg: "Those who have plenty want more and so lose all they have." Later, philosophers would say, “We don’t inherit the Earth, we borrow it from our children.” Aunt Goosey had mothered our family for the future, sometimes to her detriment or sacrifice, and here I was to usher the same for the next generations.