The Town Turkey by Clif McDonald

I was born in 1927 and the Stock Market crashed in 1929, so I grew up during the Great Depression in the Sacramento Mountains east of Alamogordo, NM. The mountain people, as we referred to ourselves, supplemented our food supply with meat from deer and wild turkey. Mountain people paid little attention to hunting season or hunting licenses. The Forest Service had the responsibility to protect the game but these laws were pretty lax for the local citizenry.

As a young boy, part of my duties was to keep meat on the table and not to use too much ammunition in doing it.   Out of necessity I became a very good shot at a very young age.  Each year just before Thanksgiving I had a flock of turkeys located and I would kill a couple for my family's festive dinner.  In those days everyone had a large cast iron pot in the yard to wash clothes. You would fill the pot with water, chop some wood and build a fire around the pot and boil the clothes. I needed hot water to dunk the turkeys in so I could remove the feathers and these clothes washing pots were perfect for this.  I would get the turkeys dunked, plucked and gutted - all out in the cold, fresh mountain air - and take them inside ready for my mother to cook.

After I grew up, I married the most beautiful, charming girl in the mountains and we moved down the mountain to town. In Alamogordo we lived at the Tinsley Trailer Park on Millionaire's Row - so named because our "modern" trailer could hook up to indoor plumbing and we did not require the bathhouse as the majority of the other residents did.

Despite our luck, our first Thanksgiving in town was traumatic.  Since we no longer lived in the mountains, we lost our unwritten right to hunt out of season and buying a turkey seemed to be a huge amount of money. My dilemma was solved when I learned of a civic club hosting a turkey shoot. In this contest, groups of ten people could each buy a ticket for one dollar and shoot at a target; the one with the best score would win a turkey.  I was the winner with a one-shot bull’s eye so I got my turkey for one dollar. I had the choice of a frozen turkey or a live turkey; since I had no experience with frozen turkeys, I chose the biggest, fattest, white-feathered live turkey available. It would just take a second to circumvent the "live" part of the turkey and get the gobbler in the truck.

When I got home my wife asked “How are you going to get the feathers off?”  I said, “No problem. I will use the hot water in the bathroom.”  Those of you who know what dressing a turkey and scalded turkey feathers smell like know that this was a very bad idea.  

Soon, a blood-poop-feather-mud-sour-metal odor began roiling out of the fogged-up bathroom in our little trailer house. I cut off the turkey’s feet and began scalding and plucking the creature in the shower.  The hot water from the water-heater under-scalded the bird and the feathers didn’t come out easily.  In addition to blood, turkeys have dirt and sometimes manure in their feathers,. A horrendous brown soup of hot water, blood, feathers, and manure stunk up the little trailer house bathroom; feathers and “parts” dammed up the shower drain, and I kept clearing out the sludgy, smelly drain to keep water from backing up. 

There was water everywhere and a giant mound of soaking wet feathers several feet high. I took the bird outside, clipped off the head and then began gutting.  At least I could breathe fresh air outside, but by the end of my endeavor, I was covered in mud, water, and blood.  Between me and the turkey, the smell was so strong I could feel my lunch thinking about making a return trip.

Our entire house smelled so sickeningly pungent that we had to eat Thanksgiving dinner out on the patio. The turkey skin was full of pinfeather pokes that couldn't be pulled out under water-heater temperatures. We opened all the windows and let our little trailer air out for hours and counted our blessings there on Millionaire's Row.  We have been married almost 70 years and ever since that first fiasco, we’ve had almost 70 Thanksgivings with almost 70 store-bought, frozen turkeys.

Thanksgiving in the Sacramentos

 Dear Dad,

This morning the air smelled like autumn and I noticed a few leaves beginning to change colors.  The fall season always reminds me of hunting turkeys with you.  You would grab the shotgun off of the back porch and invite me to go along.  Sorry I wasn’t the son that you probably wanted for a hunting partner, but you were wonderful to let me be your buddy.   I really didn’t enjoy hunting but the individual attention I got from you was worth the effort it took to search for those elusive birds.

You always seemed to know where they would be and always said that hunting turkeys was a skill few people had. Most hunters would accidently run across a flock but to set out to find a turkey was something else altogether.  Remember how you would caution me to be quiet and not walk in the dry leaves and to tread softly. I remember you stopping to listen and telling me not to breathe so loudly.  You would take that old cheap watch out of your pocket and turn the hands backward so it would stop ticking while you cocked your head at a funny angle to listen.  You taught me how to make a turkey caller from a sleepy grass straw. Turkeys would come to you but I never quite got the hang of it. Yes, I know you are supposed to suck on the straw to make the call
but it seemed I always ended up with a lot of spit and noises that were loud enough to scare a bear.  I remember a time you shot into a flock and turkeys scattered in every direction; you grabbed the caller and one old stupid Tom turned around and came back to you. He was on our dinner table that night.  

Usually after our long climbs up the mountain we would find a place to rest; this is when we had our best talks. I loved your stories about your childhood adventures in the Sacramento Mountains; you taught me the name of trees, plants and birds and how to survive in the wild. We talked about the boys I was dating and you gave me advice. Of course, I thought I knew more about boys than you did, after all, this was a new time and things had changed a lot since you were young.  It will soon be Thanksgiving and the juicy Butterball store bought turkey on our table will be delicious, but It will never replace the memories I have of a young girl and her dad hunting those scrawny, tough wild gobblers we put on our Thanksgiving table.

Your Loving Daughter,   Barbara