THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-10-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I hope everyone had a small and safe Thanksgiving- good things come in small packages these days. Turkey size is proportionate to gathering size, and even Governor Cuomo had to downscale his dinner after he took some flak about it. He was planning to invite his Mom, who is 89-years old, until people found out and called him a hypocrite for telling everyone else to scale down. I was actually planning to do the same thing as Cuomo, but his Mom wouldn't answer my calls. Everyone's looking for small turkeys this time around, but they're harder to find since they can hide more easily. Ours was sized somewhere between a cedar waxwing and a pileated woodpecker, but it was of impeccable moral character. My sister Diane said she got a 26-pound turkey for $26 dollars, which was quite a bargain. If you got the same deal in British money it would be pound for pound the best deal ever. I know there's a joke there somewhere but I was obviously unable to find it. Anyway, my sister posted a picture of her turkey and I swear it looks like it could bench press about one-fifty straight out of the oven. It had an actual 6-pack.

     I've heard people say that they spatchcocked their turkey, something that it must have taken a lot of guts to admit. To spatchcock a turkey you simply cut it down its back with a pair of scissors, remove its backbone, and, listen, I'm just not cut out for this sort of thing because I'm afraid giblets will be involved, and the thought of it is just offal so you'll have to figure it out yourself. We cook a regular turkey in the oven, just as the Pilgrims would have done it, if they had a regular turkey or an oven. You probably heard about the original Thanksgiving, back at Plymouth Rock. If I was there it would have only been because I mistook it for a rock festival. "Hey," I ask one of the elders (hard to find an elder who is older than me), "one question: why do y'all wear your belt buckles on your hats? The hat stays on fine, but don't your pants fall down?"

     Actually there is quite a rivalry going on between the folks in Plymouth and the Pilgrims down in Virginia, who also lay claim to a Thanksgiving celebration two years before the 1621 affair written about by colonists in Massachusetts. Either way, the English were in charge of the meal, and they are rarely mentioned for their exciting cuisine. If the Italians had popped over on the Mayflower I could be eating Margherita pizza while I watch the football game on TV instead. The traditional accounts tell of the settlers struggling through the long winter, and the Wampanoag native people helping by providing them with turkey seeds, or whatever, but the real story is of a much more complicated and wary alliance between two camps that needed each other to survive.

     There is also a rumor that Benjamin Franklin once proposed the turkey as the national bird, which is false, even though he did once expound on the virtues of the bird as opposed to the bald eagle in a letter to his daughter. Franklin WAS consulted about his thoughts on a national symbol, and his suggestion was a depiction of “Moses standing on the shore, and extending his hand over the sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm pharaoh who is sitting in an open chariot.” Those who were still awake by the end of the sentence immediately bonked themselves on the head with a ball peen hammer to try to induce a coma. I don't think the bald eagle is a bad choice, but the thing is bald, for heaven's sake. Certainly it's less risky to say out loud than "titmouse" or "peacock," and less time consuming than "undulated tinamou," so I guess it's fine. I think the founding fathers wanted a bird that looked like it wasn't going to take any crap, one that looked like it could swoop down and snatch your toupee if you said something unflattering about certain members of Congress, even though it was common knowledge.

     I saw an article in the Times that theorized that the reason Trump wanted to stay in office this badly even though he was so ill-suited for the job was that he loved to do things like pardon turkeys for Thanksgiving. Well in Trump's defense, who WOULDN'T want to do that? The president gets to choose one of them to live while sentencing the other to death, like in an episode of "Wiseguy." I would whisper to the chosen one, "I'm going to let you live for now, but take a good look at what happens to your little friend, and if you breathe one word about this to anybody, it'll be YOU next time. Do we understand each other?" And the turkey says, "We're live on four networks and everyone in America heard you." "In that case things aren't looking so good for you."

     By this time we've finished our tasty dinner, had our walk around the neighborhood and are sitting down to dessert, arguing about whether or not the Felix the Cat balloon once collapsed and killed someone during the parade. I don't know if there is alien life on other planets or not, but in my fantasy they come over to Earth (they don't call it that) and land on 6th Avenue right in the middle of the Thanksgiving parade (they do call it that). When they get on the radio they report back the findings to the home planet: "You can't believe the size of the cats they have here, if one sits on your lap it'll kill you." Happy holidays to you, your family and your cat.