This is the short, but sweet story of how I learned how to fry chicken from a crazy old lady in the middle of the woods.

Now before we go any further, my buddy Dave has a pretty crazy story about how he got into card tricks. The story goes that he learned everything he knows about card tricks from a wiry old man in a cave, and he’s been hooked ever since. The real story is that he was hiking down into a cave and the tour guide, who hadn’t shaved in a bit, struck up a conversation with him and got him interested in card tricks. He taught himself the actual craft and the rest is history. So, with this in mind, let’s pick up where we left off: a crazy old lady in the middle of the woods – an intense woman, who’s legend amongst the staff is surpassed only by the cloud tobacco smoke that accompanied her – a tough-love old soul by the name Ms. Swisher

At Woodlore, the second Saturday of the camp is “survival meal” day, where we kill and clean our own chickens and cook them. Now before I seem like a monster for needlessly taking lives, I’d like to mention that we do it very quickly and the birds would’ve been killed anyway. It serves to teach the boys not only where their food comes from, but also how to efficiently butcher a bird if they ever need to. Last year or so, we began grilling them for dinner, but before that, in true southern tradition, we fried them.

My first year returning to camp, I was a staff member in training – A whole 12 years old, and ready to prove I was worthy of the coveted staff hat. Now our head chef that year was, as you might have guessed, Ms. Carole Swisher. She was the mother of one of the former staff members, a tall, friendly, hillbilly-looking guy by the name of Bret. Ms. Swisher, on the other hand, was probably 70-ish, but she seemed like she was born in the late Mesozoic era. She was probably 5’3″ and had a screech of a voice that could carry for miles, courtesy of her 50 years of smoking.

I think I mentioned the cloud before, but it’s hard to do it justice. Smoking was her staple. Not once did I find Ms. Swisher without a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, not even when she was cooking. She’d stir the beans with one hand and take a drag with the other, and the whole staff knew to avoid the grits in the morning because the two main ingredients were never cornmeal and water. They were cheese and cigarette ash.

Now I say all this with nothing but love for both Brett and Ms. Swisher. For all her faults and questionable cooking practices, she was the heart and soul of the kitchen, and when Chicken day came around, she was the master. Her say overruled everything, and I had the opportunity to watch the master at work nearly every year I was there.

As I understand it, she had been frying chicken for the better part of her life and again, the recipe was probably 3/5ths cigarette ash, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the best chicken ever. The first year, I was learning. She taught me how to cut up a bird, make the flour mixture, and how to tell when they’re ready to be eaten, all with only two bowls, a knife, and a fork. I also learned that year that when you’re frying chicken, you have about a 60-second window where it’s cooked but not dry. I was very quick to learn that Ms. Swisher’s kitchen allowed zero dry chicken.

That summer was very wet, and if I recall correctly, as I was cleaning up from chicken day the heavens opened up. The thunderstorm emergency signal blared and everyone was ordered back to their tents – except me. I was safe in the tin-covered field kitchen, so I was free to finish KP. Unfortunately, I finished long before the storm let up, and I ended up stuck. 20 minutes later and no end in sight, Ms. Swisher offered me her second chair, and so I sat down next to her to talk and wait out the storm. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I remember waking up to her leaning over me with a fresh cigarette telling me to get to the quartermaster shack for the headcount. She didn’t let me leave without a fresh bottle-full of her sweet tea. I’d like to think we became friends that day.

In addition to frying chicken, she taught me her recipe for her ever-present, crazy-sweet sweet tea. I have never replicated the recipe outside of Woodlore for fear of falling into a coma due to the sheer amount of sugar that was in her mix.

That year was one of Ms. Swisher’s last good years. She went on the decline after that, but surprisingly not because of her 2-pack a day addiction. Despite this, she stayed in the staff kitchen for three more years if I recall correctly, and each year, I was right there with her every chicken day. By the fourth year, she had me teaching everyone else and she merely supervised, and the chicken was perfect every time.

Then, Ms. Swisher didn’t come back one year. She didn’t come back at all after that.

If I understand correctly, Bret was staying with her full time, and from what I’ve been told, she had a friend staying with her for a bit. Now there was one night in the fall – I think it was in 2015 – when someone broke into Ms. Swisher’s house. He wasn’t a burglar, nor was he drunk or out of his mind. He broke in with a shotgun and killed the dog first, her friend second, followed by Bret. Ms. Swisher hid in a closet but was found. She took a round of buckshot to the head.

The police report said the intruder was an angry ex-husband – not hers, her friend’s. The very same friend that was staying at her place. The police found Ms. Swisher alive, but not before the intruder turned the gun on himself.

That year at Woodlore, was tough. We were all concerned about her, and it was the first year that anyone could remember where we didn’t have Bret up near the kitchen doling out his sage advice that usually ended with “Don’t tell nobody.” We decided to put up a plaque at our main rally point in honor of Bret and all the other graduates we’ve lost over the years. Ms. Swisher was stable at the hospital, and incredibly, she pulled through soon after. She must’ve had some almighty help in her corner.

Ms. Swisher, tough as nails, visited the camp once after that. She didn’t spend the full day, but it was nice to see her one last time.

She died a few years later – peacefully in her sleep as far as I know.

So here endeth the tale of the crazy old lady in the woods, who was kind enough to teach me the sacred ways of southern fried chicken. It’s easy to say that she was a crazy old codger, but that doesn’t seem to fit just right. She was eccentric for sure, and she ruled the kitchen with an iron fist, but she always kept the staff well-fed and happy, and she had a slightly bitter wit that complemented her sweet tea quite nicely. We all miss her and Bret, and I remember her fondly every time I fry chicken or eat a bowl of grits, as I’m sure most of the staff do.

-Nickel