“So what’s your secret?”
That’s how it all started, to the best of my recollection, just me posing a question to the big man in the coveralls—who’s chickens had just won the coveted Champion Rosette purple ribbon. It was an innocent enough question, directed at someone I thought would be delighted—he was an expert chicken farmer, after all, it said so right there on his placard.
“Humph,” he said, not so much as looking up; he and what I presumed to be his wife had set up a portable table near the enclosure and were playing cards.
“They’re so big!” said Trang, her face lit up like a child’s, “What you feed them to grow so high?”
The man only frowned. It was funny, because until that day I’d never met a stranger who hadn’t taken to her—with her thick South Vietnamese accent and innocent
