The Pigeon Project

When I was a young girl, during the latter half of the 1950s, Donald, the son of my grandfather’s brother….. my second cousin, tended to pigeons as a hobby. Homing pigeons.

Uncle Danny built a pigeon coop in the backyard, high off the ground (I remember this because we had to climb a make-shift ladder to reach the platform). The coop was similar to that of a chicken pen with wire walls, replete with loosed feathers and droppings galore.

One day while I was visiting, Donald and his friend, who, in retrospect reminds me of Eddie Haskell, assisted in the experiment to take the pigeons far and let them out to fly. With the intention, of course, that they would find their way home (hence, the term 'homing' pigeon). Donald and his friend loaded the pigeons in two wire cages, and 'Eddie', reluctantly put them on the back seat of his Chevrolet. This was to be their first flight away from home. The pigeons not the boys. Donald and 'Eddie' drove their cargo into the Valley (a fair distance from home-base in Los Angeles) where, with great trepidation, the birds were released into the great blue yonder.

We waited nearly all day for those pigeons to fly home. Then, toward the end of the eleventh hour, just as panic was about to set in, we caught a glimpse of one pigeon. It was circling in the setting sun against the backdrop of a fading sky. What a glorious sight. Pandemonium broke out in the yard where, by then, several other friends along with my other cousins, Alberta and Patty, had joined us in the waiting ritual. Soon all the pigeons began to appear as well, fluttering down and onto the roof of their pen.

The experiment had worked!

It was a good day.

And this ~ was a good memory.

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