The 27 Turkeys

Dawdling along with the online New York Times today, I ran across this nifty Q & A snippet:

Q. It’s hot out. I plan to avoid turning on my oven for the rest of the summer. Yet you and your team are roasting turkeys. Why?

Thanksgiving is coming, and fast. We’ve got stories to investigate, recipes to develop, tables to set before people start coming to us to ask about what to cook this year and how.

A golden memory suddenly clattered into my consciousness with a sound like billiard balls being racked up. Thirty-some years ago, while attempting to raise a pack of wild savages with only the help of a single mate (polygamy having by then been restricted to the steaming interior of Borneo and the wave bruised shores of Patagonia), I had suddenly come into possession of 27 frozen turkeys. It was both a bonanza and a burden that challenged me as nothing ever has outside of the time I stuffed a dozen sticks of Bonomo's Turkish Taffy into my mouth on a dare from Wayne Matsuura when we were in fifth grade.

But unlike the taffy episode, I did not choke when it came to those 27 frozen Butterballs. Here's how the whole caper went down . . .

I was at the time employed by Fingerhut Telemarketing, supervising approximately one hundred distinctly louche phone hustlers in an office on Larpenteur Avenue. Amidst the din of raffish voices growling and hissing about bargains on pillow protectors ("Only nine-ninety-nine plus shipping and handling!") I was pummeling my brains one day, trying to come up with a way to feed my ever-growing brood while maintaining a parasitic mortgage on a crumbling hovel and springing for winter tires on the family chariot -- the current set of wheels had less traction than a jellied eel.

As I pondered my looming financial doom that December afternoon, the manager's door opened and an arm snaked out to beckon me inside with a curling index finger. I obeyed on the instant. The boss was seated at his desk and did not bother to invite me to sit down. Glancing up at me through a pair of glasses as thick as welding goggles, he brusquely informed me that a truck would be down at the loading bay in one hour. It was filled with frozen Butterball turkeys supplied by the generous chairman of Fingerhut, Ted Deikel, to distribute to all employees after their shift was ended at 9 p.m. My job was to inform the crew of their good fortune, then to lead them down to the loading dock and supervise the handout. Any surplus turkeys, said the boss, I could dispose of as I pleased -- since the truck driver had instructions to return the truck empty to the warehouse. 

I immediately sensed a potential windfall for me and mine. If there were a few extra turkeys left over, I would have Amy nip over in our van so we could nab them for our freezer. After kissing the ground in front of my boss and backing out of his office I snuck into the break room, where I phoned Amy. Game as always, she agreed to be the getaway driver if indeed I could 'boost' a few extra birds for our anemic pantry. 

Telemarketers, as a rule, are desperate characters with attenuated social skills and a conscience impervious to remorse. (I should know -- I used to be one.) That evening, after a few snarled "Thanks" and even a few sniveling "Bet these are grade B birds," I quickly counted the remaining turkeys -- there were exactly 27 of 'em. I told the driver to hold on just a few minutes, ran up to the break room to phone Amy, and as soon as she arrived, with the kids along in their pajamas, we piled the frozen loot in the back of the van. I ran back upstairs to turn off the lights and lock the door, then we headed home, gloating over our haul. 

Once home Amy and I carried the kids back to their beds; they were deep asleep (or pretended to be for the free ride.) Our backs already aflame with incipient sciatica, we then hustled the birds out of the van and onto several rickety shelves in the cold unheated garage. Each one weighed more than a bowling ball. 

"They'll stay froze in here, all right!" I chuckled as I swung the last turkey into place. But Amy had been watching the WCCO news that afternoon, and she delivered a body blow to my smug hopes.

"It's supposed to warm up starting this weekend -- temperatures in the forties and all the snow's gonna melt" she said.

 Drat! Those turkeys would keep us stuffed to the gills through a good part of the winter if they didn't spoil. I figured each one was good for at least three meals -- roasted and served on a platter; leftovers with dumplings; and then the remaining carcass simmered for a hearty noodle soup.

"Don't worry; you'll come up with some . . . kind of idea" Amy tried to comfort me -- but I had noted that pause, where she undoubtedly meant to add an adjective such as 'idiotic' but then thought better of it.

The next day, feeling refreshed and optimistic, I DID come up with an excellent idea. I would contact everyone we knew within a five mile radius who had a freezer, asking them for space to park a bird or two until we could use them. I got on the rotary phone and began to dial. Turns out that most of our so-called friends didn't have that kind of space in their freezers, or else boorishly demanded a turkey for themselves in return for storing two. Outraged at such effrontery, I turned them down flat. Nobody was getting a hold of any of MY precious Butterballs, not after Amy and I had slaved so hard to swipe them in the first place.

I won't say that Amy smirked at my idea's assured demise, but she certainly seemed more chipper than usual that morning as she went about preparing one of the turkeys for roasting and then mixing up a big batch of cornbread dressing. I wonder if Edison had to deal with that kind of thing when he was inventing the light bulb? 

But I had one final phone call to make, an ace in the hole. The bishop of our ward, out in Roseville, I knew, had a capacious chest freezer in his basement. But would he consent to having it hijacked by our gobblers -- and even then, would there be enough room for over twenty large Butterballs? Well, nothing ventured nothing gained -- I called him up, and lo and behold he consented to the proposal, without asking for a single turkey in return. He said he'd just emptied out the chest freezer the week before and didn't know what to fill it with now. Informing Amy of my triumph, I hastily reloaded all but four of the turkeys back into the van, my vertebrae audibly giving way as I labored, and had them safely tucked into the bishop's basement freezer in less time than it takes to polish a porcupine. 

And all that winter (a viciously interminable one, as I recall) the Torkildsons feasted on dark meat and white meat; we divvied up the 'Pope's nose' with great hilarity; and built a collection of wishbones rarely if ever seen before in the Western hemisphere. 

In fact we at last grew so weary of turkey that I never bothered to collect the last two or three from the bishop's freezer. For all I know they're still in there -- part of the permafrost, no doubt. Maybe I should call him up -- I still have his number -- and tell him if he doesn't want them to donate them to a local food pantry.