Bone Turkey
We were poor college students, over 1,600 miles from home, when we celebrated our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife. The capacity of our kitchen was two, uncomfortably. It was 1976.
Dave Tricky, a fellow student, came over with his girlfriend. It was a big deal; friends and food mean a lot when you don’t have much.
Holidays make us miss home when we can’t be there. But, I’ll never forget how proud and excited we felt to host our own gathering of four. We were becoming real adults. I was 20 and Dale was 19.
We moved the tiny kitchen table to the slightly larger living room and stationed it uncomfortably close to the front door to accommodate the crowd.
After the blessing, I ceremoniously stood, as the “man” of the house to proudly carve the bird. It was one of life’s great moments.
Sadly, thankfulness was soon replaced with deflating humiliation. The knife didn’t glide through tender breast meat. It hit bone!
I stayed calm and poked around. The whole damn turkey was devoid of meat. I brought home a bone turkey. If not for the legs, it would have been vegetarian Thanksgiving. Finally, they left.
Defeated, I carried the bone-bird to the kitchen built for two, uncomfortably, to scavenge the remains. We could use even sparse leftovers.
In the processes of cleaning the carcass I flipped the bird and there, before my defeated eyes, lay two succulent turkey breasts, laughing at me. We’d cooked the bird breast-side down. I’d carved the boney back.
A lesson for a boney bird:
Successful leaders search through bones to find meat.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the US.
Happy Thanksgiving Dan……..Thanks for reminding me to look a little harder for the blessings, wait just a bit longer, and be thankful for each and every one.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too, indie, and thanks for being a regular.
…when all else fails, approach from a new direction 🙂 … Enjoy a Great Thanksgiving!
Thanks Ken. I appreciate you.
Great story! My most memorable Thanksgiving turkey story is when we rented a cabin in the woods…. didn’t realize the oven wasn’t working until the turkey had been in the oven for 3 hours and was stil raw. I carved it up and cooked the entire Thanksgiving dinner on the grill in the snow. Leaders have fun finding alternative solutions.
LOve it… thanks for sharing!
Great memory there Dan. It’s fun to laugh at ourselves all these years later. Wish we could sit a spell with a cup of coffee and I could share some of my bloppers with you too. 😉
Perhaps one day we’ll share a coffee and a few stories… Stranger things have happened.
Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, and we carved up a succulent bird with leftovers for soup, curried turkey, sandwiches, pasta casserole, and other wonderful leftover dishes.
Long gone are the days when as students, we told the person at the west end of the table that he was responsible for getting stuff in and out of the fridge, and the person at the east end of the table that she was responsible for getting stuff on and off the stove, and when after dinner we wiped dishes the dishwasher washed – three times – because as we were chatting and carrying on, he didn’t realize we kept recycling them into the sink! What a gag!
Great memories!
Happy US Thanksgiving to all.
Hi Lynn…great fun! Thank you for sharing your story.. I close my eyes and see it …
What a delightful surprise after your disappointment. That was absolutely hilarious Dan……….a “bone” turkey. Happy Thanksgiving Dan.
Thank you for stopping in again, Doug. I told that story to the boys at Starbucks last Wednesday. 🙂 See you soon
Happy Thanksgiving Dan, I love the story!
Happy Thanksgiving Dan, thank you for your story and for the lesson at the end of it.
Dan,
What a delightful story, with a memorable ending! Happy Thanksgiving to you and Dale.
Beautiful! I love the shared memories! Thank you.
But didn’t you learn from it?
Dan, this reminds me of my poor student days when we had a 2 ring cooker. I tried to produce a meal for myself; I describe it as my 1st failed project.
My problem was I could not co-ordinate everything:
course 1 was sprouts
course 2 was the meat pie
course 3 was broccoli
They were ‘OK’ but together they would have been very good.
Your story so reminds me about it so thanks – much appreciated and I hope this year was GREAT!
Dan, your story reminds me of my wife’s and my 1st Thanksgiving. She wanted it to be very special so she went to the store the week before the Holiday and bought a fresh turkey at more than twice the price of frozen, which surprised me because she was normally so frugal. When I asked her how she would keep it fresh a week before we were to cook it, she excitedly explained that wasn’t a problem because she put it in the freezer. I just thought, “Just say okay honey, that will work.” So much for a fresh turkey.