It is my studied opinion that if you go back far enough to find the connection, all people on earth are related. Such is the case with the good folks in this little tale. I would need to go back many generations to find my relationship to this family, but cousins they are.
Ray Lawton was born in 1884, son of James Lawton and his wife, the former Sarah Saubert, all in the great state of Wisconsin. Ray’s mother, Sarah, had a brother Mike Saubert living in close proximity to the Lawton family. Mike had a couple of sons named Bill and Al Saubert, who, of course, were first cousins to Ray.
It seems on a few isolated occasions around the turn of the twentieth century the cousins, as well as a couple of friends named Carl Smith and Bill Burgduff, had pilfered a few chickens from their neighbors and cousins the Taylor family. Enjoying a good joke, they had a chicken roast with the results of their ill-gotten gains. The Taylors, missing four or five chickens every once in a while, placed a lock on their chicken house to preclude fowl theft. That presented the boys with a double joke opportunity.
James Lawton told the boys to take some of his chickens any time they wanted a chicken roast, but that was no fun at all if he didn’t mind, so they hatched a new plan to lift Taylor’s chickens. One dark moonless night they crept up to the back of the chicken house carrying a long sturdy pole. They inserted the pole under a back corner of the chicken coop and pried the entire building up high enough for the smallest boy to crawl under. With no chicken getting a chance to make a sound, swiftly a supply was passed to the boys on the outside before Al crawled out underneath again. The coop was then allowed back down onto its wall, as the boys hurried away in the darkness to a fine chicken roast.
The Taylors missed their chickens, but never learned how they had disappeared. The culprits told the story, and enjoyed a good laugh in the telling, for many years thereafter.
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