Thanksgiving Lessons from a Bone Turkey
We were poor college students, over 1,600 miles from home, when my wife and I celebrated our first Thanksgiving. It was 1976. Our first anniversary wouldn’t arrive for three weeks.
I’ll never forget how proud we felt to host Dave Tricky, a fellow student, and his girlfriend for our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. Yes, that’s his real name, but this Thanksgiving the trick was on me.
We were almost ‘real’ adults. My bride was 19. I was 20.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
We moved our tiny kitchen table uncomfortably close to the front door to accommodate the crowd of four.
After the blessing, I ceremoniously stood, blade in hand, ready to carve the bird. It was one of life’s great moments. I was the ‘man’ of the house. But my manliness soon withered.
The knife point struck bone, not turkey. I poked around with the blade. The whole turkey was bone. I purchased a BONE TURKEY!
Dave and his girlfriend probably stopped at a fast-food joint on their way back to campus. If not for the drumsticks and wings, our first Thanksgiving was a vegetarian delight.
In defeat, after our guests left, I carried the bone-bird to our closet of a kitchen to scavenge the remains. We could use even sparse leftovers. When I flipped the bird over, two succulent turkey breasts mocked me.
We cooked the bird upside down!
What I learned from a bone turkey:
- Humble yourself before a turkey humbles you.
- Practice gratitude. You have more than you know.
- A shift in perspective has power to change everything. During difficulty, gratitude is a shift in perspective.
One day, if you keep learning, you’ll laugh at how ignorant you used to be.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Author’s note: I often repost this story when Thanksgiving Day comes to America. By the way, it’s also Thanksgiving in Brazil.
I love this story! And in your defense, it is funny that no one else thought to turn the bird over either. Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for all you do!
Thanks John. We were all young novices. 🙂
Happy Thanksgiving.
Great story. Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the turkey!
Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving, Paul.
Happy Thanksgiving, Dan! That is an awesome story and what a great memory it brings. Funny that not only did you not notice the turkey was “upside down” neither did your guests! That is classic!
I did the same thing only in my 40s. My grandmother had always cooked the bird when I was growing up and then my husband had done the cooking. I’d been divorced for almost a decade and my mother asked me to cook the turkey and all my kids and she came to my place for Thanksgiving weekend. I didn’t realize I’d cooked the bird upside down and it was the juiciest meat ever. After the laugh, it’s become tradition to cook it upside down.
Love it!! So funny and you teach us the power of doing something “wrong”.
This was a funny story. Thank you for the laugh!!! 🙂
You actually stumbled upon the best way to roast a turkey, Dan. My late mother-in-law always stuffed turkeys with pieces of apples and onions and cooked it breast side down which ensured that the breast pieces were juicy and did not dry out in the cooking process. I hope you followed that technique in the years that followed.