Nancy's Nightly
Newsletter #3"THE TURKEY
"Turkey: noun- A large American bird related to the pheasant, having
the head naked and the tail extensible; esp...the American domesticated
turkey, much esteemed as food.....as defined by Funk and Wagnalls Standard
Desk Dictionary.
"Such an understatement of definition for so symbolic a bird as we
Americans will gorge ourselves with on Thursday Nov. 26. If you are a typical
American [and I include my Canadian, Welsh, and Australian friends so you
can have a good laugh at us] well anyway, if you are typical, you have
probably eaten turkey at almost every Thanksgiving holiday of your life.
Now I realize we have a few staunch Americans who refuse to partake in
this "turkey" tradition and eat ham, beef or pork on this holiday, but
the vast majority will be consuming turkey at least once this week. Frequently
due to our spread out families, we will actually eat the same dinner either
twice on the BIG day or maybe three or four times in a two week period
depending on the travel time involved to get from one family gathering
to another.
"Now why do we choose to make what is unequivocally the dumbest animal
on the face of the earth the center of our Thanksgiving tradition? It's
dumbness is proven by the mere definition of ''having the head naked and
the tail extensible''. What other animal would be so stupid as to
run around bare headed in the November cold with it's tail extensible??
Definition here for clarification-- Extensible: adj. capable of being
extended. Now why does the turkey have this tail which is defined
as capable of being extended but in reality rarely is. Maybe it saw the
beauty of a peacock's tail in full glory and decided it needed an extendible
tail but is not intelligent enough to know how to display it. Therefore
the definition is merely --capable of extending that tail but not doing
it. Really doesn't matter anyway because the turkey tail, be it a domesticated
or wild one is not particularly a thing of beauty. So we obviously
do not recognize this traditional bird for it's beauty while it is alive.
So no reason there to give this bird so much attention.
"Ok maybe the bare head is significant? Well, I've seen a turkey head
and bare or covered it did not inspire wonder or awe in my eyes. Certainly
nothing to write home about. And if it is walking around in some of our
northern climates, it's down right stupid to go bare headed this time of
year.
"It's fat and has very big breasts. Now that's at least two words
we all can identify with. Especially us women who are constantly
trying to not be fat and still have 'big breasts' Isn't it strange
that when we lose weight it is so often in the boobs first and not the
behind or middle where most of us tend to carry the extra holiday pounds?
Maybe we should take a lesson from the turkey, if we want big boobs, we
have to be fat to carry them!! Ugh. Not a pretty picture.
"Ok now, we all agree, a turkey is not an animal of beauty alive, but
what about it on a platter fully dressed and browned with side dishes to
compliment the Good Housekeeping picture. Now we move to a whole new definition
of turkey. Now we're talking about over the river and through the
woods to grandmothers house we go or Aunt Sylvias' or Uncle Henry's. Now
we begin to understand the significance of THE TURKEY.
"The turkey is part of the place where as a small child we were actually
allowed to sometimes talk with our mouths full of food and sometimes had
to if we wanted any of the twenty or more adults in the room to hear what
we had to say.
"The turkey was the first really big meal we cooked as brides or hostesses
for the first time on that first Thanksgiving in our own home. We
asked everybody we met how to thaw it, clean it, season it, stuff it, roast
it, carve it, and how many pounds of turkey is it we're supposed to have
per person present. Do small children count as a half a person? We have
all gone through that 'first' turkey dinner, the frazzled nerves, the countless
questions and most of us have lived to tell about it. And tell about
it we do. How many Thanksgiving dinners end up in that age old ''Do you
remember the year Hilda did........to the turkey??'' Fill in the blank
with any assortment of disasters that can possibly happen to a cooked fowl
and I bet you have heard at least a dozen of them.
"What is it about the smell of a roasting turkey that immediately turns
us mellow and reminicising about times past and persons gone, but not forgotten?
Just close your eyes and allow the aroma of that bird fill your head with
visions of friends, places, loves won, loves lost, families joined, families
broken and all that is warm and wonderful, happy and sad, full and lonely,
all at the same time. What other aroma does that to us?
"So the how's and why's of the turkey becoming the American bird of
choice for Thanksgiving are really not very important for the turkey is
only a symbol of the ideal we all strive to achive as families...food,
shelter, love, laughter and closeness. So that is probably the true reason
for having a turkey as our tradional meal. What family has a perfect turkey
dinner every year? That poor dumb animal is not only food to our bodies,
but fills us with laughter and memories of all the disasterous Thanksgiving
dinners we have endured over the years.
"So on that note I wish each and every one of you a Happy Thanksgiving
and hope your turkeys all turn out to be candidates for the cover of Better
Homes and Gardens magazine.
"Hugs and warm wishes to all of you from a Bird that is not a turkey,
"Nancy
"P.S. John wants to add that if Ben Franklin had been allowed to have
his way 220 years or so ago, we'd all be eating eagles for Thanksgiving
as good old Ben wanted the turkey to be the National Bird, thereby excluding
it from our dining room tables."
