March 11, 2004
Woke up and took Mike (sister's husband) into Lynchburg to pick up his truck at the train station. On the way back we stopped at a famous hot dog place on the side of the road. I'm not even sure if the place had a sign. This place was literally wide place in the road. It backed up to a steep hillside and the parking lot was only wide enough for one row of cars before encroaching on the highway. Apparently this place has been around for ever and it a favorite of the locals. We had the house specialty chili dogs with coleslaw on top for all of about $2. It was mighty good too.
After lunch we went on a drive around the area to look at the various Mennonite and Amish farms. Along the way we came upon the bird man of Volenes. Mike and Angela had been to see the bird man before and were intrigued. The Bird Man (Ben Hazelwood) has a farm with about eight or ten small barns behind the farm house. the barns contain antiques and tractors and other such things. Between the barns are a multitude of various sized chicken wire pens and coops for his birds. Mostly he keeps chickens, but there are ducks, geese, turkeys, peacocks, and probably more things I didn't see. What is remarkable are the variety. He has all kinds of strange and exotic chickens. The pieces of resistance though are the fighting cocks. Yep, Real Fighting cocks with spurs that can kill. One, Big Red (pictured with Mike) once killed a German Shepard Dog. These chickens are smart enough to gouge at their foe's eyes. The story goes that the German Shepard got blitzkrieged in the eyes. These birds will even gouge their spurs into something and then flap their wings to tear open the wound....
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