Turkey Tails

I once had a colleague tell me that I lived a very exotic and charmed life. Well, let me tell you… if you’re willing to walk away from everything sane and stable on a regular basis, it is really quite easy. Growing up as a military brat, I had no choice, but every year after 19, it was a conscious one. Given that I was programmed that way, perhaps those conscious decisions were easier to make than it would be for others.

Regardless, there are many downsides to having so many homes. A big one is that you rarely get to visit your family for the holidays. I have barely been to see my family for Christmas half a dozen times since college. Even more rare was the family visit on Thanksgiving. This was overcompensated by creating my own local family de jour comprised of friends and, well…their families.

There is no shortage of family drama during the holidays. So you can imagine the plethora of family holiday stories I’ve survived over the years. Of all my favorites, none are more hilarious than my three surrogate Thanksgivings.

1 – Germany : Bird is the Word

I lived in Germany during the most bohemian and artistic years of my twenties. Granted it wasn’t for very long, but it wasn’t short of adventures either. One of my many adventures was teaching my friends about Thanksgiving. Of course, being a strictly American holiday, most of them had never heard of it. So, naturally, I threw a Thanksgiving Dinner party- with an international twist to it. All of my friends brought a traditional holiday dish from their home country: Kavurma from Iraq, lovers mooncakes from China, Filipino puto, Empenadas from Dominican Republic, date couscous from Israel, strawberry dumplings from Prague, and Almond cookies from Leipzig- to name a few.

Providing the American food proved far more tricky than expected. I had to go to a specialized supermarket to find sweet potatoes for candied yams. I never could find canned pumpkin for making pumpkin pie and had to resort to using pumpkin baby food (naturally, an epic failure). Nothing was more challenging than finding the most important ingredient: Turkey.

Everywhere I went, I was asking for “Truthahn,” what the dictionary said was “Turkey.” Unfortunately, no deli, market, or neighbor understood what I meant, even when they looked at the word in my dictionary or when I mimed and clucked “gobble gobble.” They simply just did not have Turkey there. After threatening to cancel the party all together, a friend of mine from Milan who had spent her college years in America pointed out that I had been using the wrong word. In North East Germany, the word for Turkey was “Pute.” Going back to all of the same delis and markets, I finally found a butcher who told me the only place they knew where to get such a bird was in a specialty store across the border in the Czech Republic.

My German friend Dani and his girlfriend, who had just moved to Germany from the Dominican Republic, offered to drive me there to pick it up. As soon as we crossed the border we drove through the beautiful countryside, oddly passing at least 3 brothels with women in windows advertising their “goods.” Apparently this was a popular market here. Prostitutes and Turkey. Who would have thought?

Once we got to the market, I realized I’d forgotten I don’t speak Czech. So I asked in German, “Schön Tag. Darf ich eine großes Pute bitte haben?” Before the butcher could even respond, Dani’s girlfriend started freaking out and rambling in Spanish. She knew even less German than I did. So unfortunately, she thought I was asking for a large “puta”: as in the Spanish word for “prostitute” (pronounced nearly the same).I slapped my forehead in embarrassment. I hadn’t even thought about that.

Needless to say, after taking 2 days to thaw in my bathtub full of ice water, and cutting the bird in half and cooking each side separately in my tiny East German oven, I had an international feast starring a Czech….cut-in-half…uh… prostitute.

2 – Wisconsin : The Moose Drool

One year, I was invited to Thanksgiving Dinner with my good college friend Tom’s family. I arrived late after my 2 hour drive from Chicago to a lake house in Wisconsin. It was a large house surrounded by thick woods. As I walked in, the grandparents were being sat at the head of the table as everyone else was being gathered. When I sat down, his aunt offered me a drink. I said I would take a beer.

“Oh come on now, he’s a man,” his grandmother belted, “get him some vodka.”

“Oh no, I’m good. Beer is fine,” I politely dismissed her with my palm. “Besides, I can get kicked out of my religious college for even drinking the beer.”

“Oh bull,” She continued her grumpy mumbling diatribe.

I tried to not let my hyper-expressive face give away how uncomfortable I was. Immediately, I was brought a Moose Drool Brown Ale and sipped it as the conversations unraveled. The grandparents were getting drunk on vodka criticizing each other on history decades old, their children were already fighting over inheritance and property, Tom and his wife were trying to keep their son from fussing, and their brother was starring at the ceiling, completely zoning out-humming the theme song from Zelda.

Being notorious for getting myself out of iffy situations, I dismissed myself to the bathroom where I used their house phone to call my cell phone to make it ring. I then spoke really loud to my imaginary friend on the other line about an emergency. I went back to the table and said, “I’m sorry everyone, my good friend Christine had a car accident an hour away and I need to go get her to take her back to Chicago.”

They groaned with disappointment while the uncle who had been so rudely interrupted from telling his story about his father’s homemade 9 year old cheddar said his fairwell with an ever sarcastic “no… please…don’t go” tone. I waived and said sorry as I opened the front door, stepping backwards while waiving off in an apologetic hurry, turned around to face a blizzard that was covering my car in a foot of snow, and said too audibly, “well, shit.” The aunt gasped and I just closed the door behind me.

Twenty minutes down the road there was no snow. I knew it was following me though so I sped up as if running from a tornado (which I’d done as well, I might add). I got up to 80 miles per hour on a pitch black country road when suddenly a moose jumped out in front of me. Luckily it was tall enough to where the hood of my car went right under her, flipping her over my car. I had slammed on my breaks so hard in the wet darkness that I burned two rubber donuts into the road before hitting the gutter on the side of the road. I sat trying to think my way out of my shock. I got out of the car. Nothing, not even a dent. How could that be? I looked at the top of the car and there were massive scratches on the top of my boat of a 1994 Cutlass Ciera. I looked down to catch my breath when I noticed that a patch of grass was hanging on my tire. I bent down to take it off when I realized that apparently I had hit the grass so hard, a few blades had actually pierced into the tire. As the snow caught up with me, I shook my nerves off with laughter the rest of the way home.

3 – Kansas : Lions and Tigers and Turkeys

One thanksgiving, I offered to drive my friend James to his mother’s house in Kansas for thanksgiving. James was incredibly low key and I’d met his mother before so I knew it would be far less intense than the last one in Wisconsin.

It was a charming, stereotypical Bible-beltish farm in the heart of the country. In the heart of, well, nowhere. The house was Wizard of Oz white, the land between the house and the barn was a lawn of dust, and a windmill introduced the grass field at the end of the four-tiered log fence.

After his brother had us sit in the back of his massive big rig pick up, off-roading down muddy creek beds, we came back to see a giant aging 80 pound turkey pecking around the barn.

“Time to kill the bird boys!” His mom yelled.

“Uh…what?” I said quietly to my friend in a hoarse voice. (I’d lost my voice screaming for my life.)

Laughing, “it’s not as bad as you think. It’s like cutting down your own Christmas Tree.”

Stuttering while wiping the mud off my arms, “oo…ooh.”

James and his brother chase the white feathered demon to the middle of the dirt patch. I gyrated awkwardly trying to appear as if I was helping. They didn’t notice until James had secured Jabba (yes, they named it before they killed it) and his brother had held his head into the ground. Pulling out his hatchet from its holster, his brother looked at me laughing, “what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Well come over here. You get the honors.”

Knowing full well but in full denial, “Of doing what?”

He raises the hatchet towards me in duh-ish fashion. “Here.”

“Oh, I really can’t…”

“Here!” He demanded.

I delicately took the hatchet from his massive farmish hands with my own Downy soft piano playing fingers. I get on my knees between the two of them.

“Bring it down heavy right here.” He points between the back of Jabba’s wrinkled snood and wattles.

“I don’t think I …”

“Don’t be a pussy!!” He shouted.

Triggering every feeling every over-compensating bully had ever made me feel, I came down with the fury of ten thousand gay Thors.

* DINK *

The turkey’s massive, fist-girthed neck was barely scratched. The turkey screams itself loose in panic. The boys frantically try grabbing it again. Feeling embarrassed, I tried even harder to help this time. Jabba had slipped through their hands again, running straight for me. This was my chance to make up for myself. I lunged and belly-flopped right on top of it. It scratched and bit at me, crushing beneath my belly. The brother ran over. James grabbed Jabba’s crown and testicular-looking caruncles and slammed them into the dirt. His brother made me get up on my knees, keeping Jabba underneath them. The turkey let out the sound of a hundred dying rabbits and before I could think, his brother pulled out his .44 and shot him in the neck. My ears rang as I looked down to see my body splattered in blood. I closed my mouth on top of some that had sprayed inside of my mouth. I kept sitting there, on top of Jabba the Hutless, frozen as his brother hacked off what remained of the head.

“Are you alright?” His mother sweetly asked.

“Yes, maa…” James pulled a snow sled up next to me, “…aaam?”

“Here,” James said, “put him on this.”

“Okaaay?”

We rolled the turkey over onto the sled gurney and dragged it to the windmill where his brother had me help him tie rope around Jabba’s foot and spurs and hoist it high to the top of the windmill to blood drain it. I walked away quickly back to the house and turned to look back at the scene from an aviary horror film. “Children of the Corn” indeed.

I later sat there and watched as his mother boiled off the feathers and ripped its guts out. Ever since then, I’ve never been a big fan of turkey. I wiped the mud and guts off myself and with my dirty, hoarse voice, moaned out a tired “Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.”