Thanksgiving Reimagined

Thanksgiving always makes me think of man skills, particularly the skills of those men who've come before us.  I'm not talking about the legendary men of the Greatest Generation whose grit and determination helped them survive the Great Depression, deliver a crushing defeat to the Nazis and the Japs, then come home to steer the domestic ship of industry to staggering success while fathering the Baby Boomers, the generation who would first invent the anti-establishment movement, then systematically bankrupt Social Security. 

I'm not even talking about the men who settled the brave new world we call home, the ones who climbed into a boat, set sail for a land they'd heard of but never seen, and didn't poke their heads out until their ships crashed against a rocky coast somewhere east of home.

I'm talking about the men who helped their uninvited Indo-European guests survive their first winter, then wished like hell they'd have sent them packing as soon as it thawed. 

These were men whose idea of a hunting trip involved walking barefoot over miles of treacherous terrain, engaging in mortal combat with wild 4,000 pound animals, killing them with weapons made of sticks and rocks, then skinning, gutting, and transporting the animals -- by hand -- back to camp for their women to cook.  No tricked out Eddie Bauer edition 4-wheel drive, no laser-sighted sniper rifle with optional GPS range-finding technology and patented recoil-absorbing butt stock, and certainly no overpriced hunting lodge with complimentary Hunter's Breakfast, in-room wi-fi, and pseudo-manly hunting guides who expect a 20% gratuity to show you where the "wild" animals were released the night before. 

* * * 

This Thanksgiving I'm smoking a turkey for our family meal.  By smoking, I mean I'm lighting a $30 pile of designer lump charcoal in an $800 ceramic grill, then coming back 5 hours later to see if it's time to eat.  By free-range turkey, I mean an $87 sixteen-pound gobbler I bought last week from a local health food store that also sells fair trade coffee and bulk flax seed.   

My concept of free-range is this: A turkey farmer hatches a turkey egg.  He releases the turkey to roam the earth, getting into turkey adventures until it's time to kill it, pluck it, and eat it.  Not only does the turkey farmer save money on turkey cages, but he also doesn't bother to inject the turkey with growth hormones to ensure plump, juicy breasts, or antibiotics to prevent bacteria from prematurely killing the turkey and the turkey eater.  I stole a glance down the turkey aisle yesterday while I was at the supermarket.  I can buy a Butterball chock-full of synthetic pharmaceuticals guaranteeing strict uniformity of taste, color, and texture for ninety cents a pound.  For $87 I get a scrawny "heritage bird with a natural, slightly gamey flavor."  I didn't hunt, track, kill, or disembowel anything; I just wrote the check. 

My forefathers would have been so proud.