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Texas | Columns | "Texas Tales"

Chicken Peddler

by Mike Cox
Mike Cox

While today practically any product, from clothing to electronics to toys and even groceries, can be purchased by cell phone or online for same- or next-day delivery, shopping was very different in 19th and early 20th century Texas. Especially for rural residents of modest means.

Most of us know about traveling salesman, and Boomers still remember the door-to-door selling of vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, Bibles and cleaning products. But few are likely to have ever heard about, much less seen, the country entrepreneur known as a chicken peddler.

"In my early boyhood days in a Hunt County cross-roads town one of my favorite friends was the chicken peddler," World War One veteran and then magazine editor Col. Ike Ashburn wrote in the summer of 1952. "The front of his wagon was stocked with [a] store of merchandise while the rear end…was filled with chicken coops and egg grates."

The chicken peddler had a simple business model: He carried a line of household goods and "notions" and traded them with rural housewives for chickens, eggs, butter or vegetables. Those commodities, in turn, he sold to butchers and grocers or exchanged for something else he could sell or barter. Some chicken peddlers had their own country stores in addition to their home service.

Traveling in a small horse- or mule-drawn wagon, the chicken man would cover some 30 miles a day, his arrival heralded by the clop of hooves and the cackle of his day's scaly legged acquisitions. Since he made his rounds in the fall when the cotton and other crops were in, his arrival was a big deal for farm families who, in the modern vernacular, didn't get out much. In fact, studies have shown that fewer than half of them even owned a wagon or later, an automobile.

For housewives along his route the fowl financier offered canned goods and staples, kitchen utensils, and toys for children. In a time when most women sewed clothes for their family and themselves, the chicken peddler offered calico, gingham or percale; cotton thread of every hue and sewing needles. He also carried used flour sacks women would cheerfully trade for a hen long past her laying days. (An old hen still made for good chicken and dumplings.) Once the last traces of flour had been washed out, the bags with their colorful brand labels could be cut and sown for underwear.

For the men (and probably some of the country women) the yardbird barterer provided Levi Garret Snuff or Star Navy chewing tobacco. Not all the products he carried were factory-made. At times, homemade mustang grape wine might be available, along with patent medicines that wouldn't cure you but with their high alcohol content sure made you think you were better.

As Christmas approached, the chicken peddler offered citrus fruit, Peppermint candy, chewing gum and toys for children and fat turkeys for holiday feasting. He recorded those transactions and all others in a small notebook.

But chicken peddlers brought rural Texans more than trade goods. In an era when many families did not yet even have a crank telephone, much less a battery powered radio set (since most rural homes also lacked electricity), the chicken peddler amounted to a communication medium.

"He brought news…which [became] the focal point of all gossip and the storehouse of local information," Ashburn recalled. "He was conversant with and sympathetic about tragedies and rejoiced with the country people about their successes and joyful events."

Knowing his trade area well, the poultry peddler could report on crop conditions, cotton prices, the cattle market and other information of great value to his isolated customers.

Appreciated as he was by his clientele, the chicken peddler Ashburn remembered best was decidedly human, subject to mankind's foibles and weaknesses.

"When the yearly revival meeting was held under the brush arbor, he was always one of the favorite targets for personal work and pleading," Ashburn wrote. "Under the influence and solicitous endeavor of his more devout friends and neighbors and the magic spell of the meeting he always got religion at each and every revival…."

If the worn-out knees of his overalls could be partially attributed to the amount of time spent on his knees seeking redemption, the worn seat of his pants could as well be linked to the regularity of his backsliding, Ashburn said.

"Bless his heart," Ashburn wrote, "he never knowingly or willingly wronged any human being…or animal…. He was generous to a fault and [despite] whatever weaknesses he exhibited he was always loyal and faithful to his family and wanted to secure for them the best things of life insofar as his limited income would permit."

© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" December 24, 2019 column


Mike Cox's "Texas Tales" :

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    Mike Cox's "Texas Tales" :

  • Cornbread 12-18-19
  • Snakebitten Family 12-12-19
  • Runyon and Rabb 12-4-19
  • Duels 10-30-19
  • The Hexagon Hotel 9-4-19

    See more »


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