by Youngbear Roth

Created on: March 17, 2010   Last Updated: November 02, 2010

Shoving hard-boiled eggs into his mouth with one hand and gesticulating with the other, my friend garbled dryly, "How is writer's consciousness different from anyone else's?  How do you," he aimed his crooked finger, "become inspired?"

His question amazed me because of those roundly stuffed cheeks.

I selected an egg holding it in the morning light.  I cracked the shell noticing texture and the weight of the warm white oval in my palm.

"Have I ever told you the story of how a single egg destroyed the finest barn ever raised in the Midwest?"  I asked.  "You see, my great-grandfather, Wiley Vaslexi, was not a man who did things in a small way.  It seems he and Lenin struggled over a fundamental disagreement; Grandpa Wiley left Russia because the party would not allow him to run the revolution by himself.  So, instead," I concentrated, peeling my egg, "he became a chicken rancher in the Midwestern United States.  Being a rancher in the grand style - my great-grandmother never clear on what defined the grand style, and Grandpa Wiley having only a handful of diseased, naked chickens - he invested their life savings in building the finest, most prodigious barn the Bible Belt had ever seen.

Neighboring farmers traveled from all over the territory, standing, gawking at Grandpa Wiley's shocking contemporaneous architecture, scratching their jaws in wonder.  'Why, I believe, sir, that Noah himself, taking instruction from the Almighty, could not have built such a fine barn,' the county preacher said.  It stood proud, red and white planted against the sky, and at night Grandpa Wiley threw a switch handle, and twenty-six spotlights blazed its sloping roof before shadows of gently rolling fields and flat lands.  'But, if I might inquire, Mr. Vaslexi,' the preacher asked, 'what will you put in it?  The chickens live in their hen houses, and you only have two horses and one cow.  If you were of the faith, I'd say it's dandy for prayer meetings, but…'  The preacher clasped bony hands, a gesture of hopelessness, because in such hard times every inch of space remained precious, every farm animal worth its weight in gold; a chicken rancher couldn't afford to lose one chicken or a single egg.  While better men than my great-grandfather starved, no one dared plumb the mystery of why Grandpa Wiley spent his hard earned money on a barn the size of Nebraska instead of increasing his number of chickens

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