Dumb, mammoth bird is a bit much
We raise our own turkey for Thanksgiving because — well, it always seems like a good idea at the time.
Poultry has been engineered to grow at amazing speeds. The chicken you get at the supermarket is only alive for six weeks, and Thanksgiving turkeys get to size in four months.
This is not terrible, this is merciful, because turkeys are the most heartachingly stupid creatures this side of the Oath Keepers.
You all but have to raise them in a padded cell, because if you don’t they will find a way to kill themselves by, for example, getting their heads stuck between the base of the pen and the ground.
This year the chick salesman apologized because the birds arrived a couple weeks early, this didn’t seem like a big deal at the time — except that, in these meat breeds, two weeks can translate into an extra 8 pounds, and a manageable 18-pounder can balloon to 26 pounds, which is what two people and two dogs found themselves staring at on Thanksgiving morning.
I didn’t know how we were going to cook it. At first blush, it appeared that we didn’t need an oven, we needed a forest fire.
Even the dogs, after splitting the neck, kind of slinked away, hoping we wouldn’t call on them to do any further heavy lifting. And speaking of lifting, a recent medical procedure has limited my capacity to lift more than 8 pounds.
Which meant I was not allowed my traditional turkey duty. Which means that I was relegated to the, for a man, dishonorable job of making sides. Which is how I found myself glumly dicing celery and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the first time in maybe 30 or 40 years.
It has changed, and I say this not as a judgment, but as an observation. The parade was hosted by two women, which of course is a welcome change from the days when, if an event was to have any cultural gravitas at all, a man had to have top billing.
So the parade would be hosted by some straight-laced guy like news anchor David Brinkley (wearing a suit and tie, if memory serves) lording over the affair with bland condescension, forcing a smile now and then to show his “human side.”
The Macy’s parade used to be three things: balloons, floats, marching bands. That was the list. It was band after band after band, and at some point it all started to sound the same, but every now and then a band from near your hometown would be invited to perform, and you would get all excited about that.
Today, much of the “parade” is pre-recorded, over-produced, pop artists singing in some Los Angeles studio. On site there were sanitized vignettes of old Broadway shows and films, including the “The Wizard of Oz,” in which instead of being antagonists, Dorothy and the Witch of the West held hands and gazed lovingly into each other's eyes. Personally, I prefer my witches wicked, but I understand time has passed me by.
The other inescapable observation is that Thanksgiving has morphed into Christmas Junior. Most of the music and motifs were Christmas related, most color themes green and red. We’ve gotten used to this, sort of — Christmas decorations going on sale in home-improvement stores in October, and commercials of people buying each other automobiles as gifts.
On that topic, I am starting a GoFundMe page for General Motors so they will be able to afford a new commercial to replace the three-years-running, world’s most hated “one for you one for me” couple. I keep thinking GM has to come out with a new model truck one of these years, but it never seems to.
Perhaps it will grow on me in time; I never thought I’d be nostalgic for David Brinkley, either.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Giant turkey, changed parade, dishonorable side work mark Thanksgiving
