Chic-chic,
another local celebrity, was one very smart chicken.
“Mrs.
A. B. Cooper," Lemon says, "would drop a dime down on the kitchen
floor, and say, 'Chic-Chic, go down to Clyde Brinkers and get yourself something
to eat.' And that chicken would pick that dime up with his beak, and walk
out to Clyde Brinkers...and drop the dime down on the step, and peck on the
door," and that was how Chic-chic would get fed. "That happened
every day, almost," insists Lemon. And that was how one very smart—and very
hungry—chicken came to be dubbed The King of Ashville.
Buster,
a dog who belonged to Ashville resident Clyde Brinkers (who fed the
above-mentioned chicken), knew just who was who
when it came to politics. This famous Ashville dog, according to Bob
Hines, another museum curator, "was said to bark at
every mention of Herbert Hoover, and likewise
growled at the mention of Hoover's
opponent, Al Smith." Local legend has it that it was actually Buster's paw
on the lever which cast Brinkers' vote for Hoover in 1928.