A letter to Julia, age 6, Part Three

Continued from November 29th, which was Part Two…

Same thing with peanuts. About the same time as that butterfly story another came out to be common knowledge that if you found a peanut with six goobers inside there was someone at Eastern New Mexico University that would pay $100 for it. To this day when I come across a really long nut, I look closely to see whether it might hold six goobers before I break it. I’m told kids in my hometown still do the same thing, so there you are.

So what I’m wondering is whether there mightn’t be someone at ENMU who will pay whatever the 2K equivalent is of $100 (1952) for a flock of chickens that are all clucks, save one. Maybe I’ll ask around.
Of course, there might be a problem– the silkies don’t qualify as clucks, I don’t believe– they are smarter than the rest. However, they hardly qualify as chickens. I personally attribute their strangeness to their inscrutable oriental background. So maybe the silkies wouldn’t disqualify me for the Y2K equivalent of $100 at 1950’s values. I don’t know. The odds of finding a 6″ swallowtail or a goober with six peas are hard to calculate– winning the lottery is 82 million to one, I think.
Things might have gone downhill badly in the last 50 years and clucks mightn’t be so uncommon anymore, one to a flock. In fact, nowadays the odds might actually be stacked to you win the lottery if you have a chicken who isn’t a cluck. Maybe there is someone at ENMU that would pay me $100 just for Lady McBeth!

A bit later:
This is getting long, and when I think of it I know just about everything I said after the word “chickens” was  a redundancy..
Give my regards to your mom and dad, your brothers and sister. Although we don’t have any heathen ladies in grass skirts singing “Bali Hai”, likely the various New Mexico girls who saw or heard of your brothers while they were here will pine and pine until they return (though they are probably concealing it from their parents and one another). Likely also the high desert will still be here when you get it into your heads, individually or severally, to come back.
Best to you, Miss Julia.
Best to all of you.
Jack

                                                        (to be continued with Part Four)