Chickenshit Afternoon, Part II

If you have never had a "Goombay Smash"
you have been missing out,
but I don't recommend them in 95 degree heat
standing over a 5 gallon vat of hot oil.

~ Brooks Hamaker

Last week, I wrote about the Chicken Drop in a post I called called Chickenshit Afternoon. The Chicken Drop, a bettors' pastime involving chickens and the trajectory of their last meal, is not as common as it once was, but it's still so well known among New Orleanians that even the erudite bar professor Chris McMillian at the Bar UnCommon took once glance at my photos of a yardbird on a Twister board behind chicken wire strapped to a plywood platform on a pool table in a bar and declared authoritatively "Well, that's a Chicken Drop."

Of course, McMillian is a master bartender and there's a certain correlation between alcohol and the Chicken Drop. I'd put it somewhere near 1:1. One also hears of variations with other livestock, including swine. Not in a bar, of course. Or maybe I just don't know those bars.

Brooks Hamaker—Mayhaw Man for years on eGullet.org and former distiller—also knew the story. In fact, he'd written it for eGullet, complete with a turkey variant. He was also kind enough to send on a link to the follow-up in which a big ol' Tom turkey goes into the fryer.

Brooks' 2003 essay, The Turkey Terror of Oak Street, Part II, takes us to the end of the story.

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