Chicken Every Sunday

     It's a book.  Chicken Every Sunday: My Life With Mother's Boarders.  It was written so long ago that it's practically science-fictional today.  Rosemary Taylor's family were certainly go-getters, and in the American Southwest starting around the turn of the century -- that's 19th-to-20th, mind -- her father's succession of business ventures and the up-and-down finances that they led to resulted in her mother taking in boarders, which led to building a bigger house and--  Well, and so on.

     It's a charming book, one of the thousands that were printed up as Armed Services Editions pocket-sized paperbacks and provided to our troops during WW II; it was even made into a stage play and a film (though the cinematic edition sounded as if it might be rather sappier than the book).

     It's heartwarming and good fun, but it's also a reminder of a time of upward mobility and great possibility for those who were open to see it and do the work.  It was a time -- and an attitude -- so distant now that it seems like something from one of my "Hidden Frontier" worlds.  In a time of grim, dark fiction -- and doom-and-gloom on the evening news -- I recommend it to your attention.