Old Tweak

Re-posting from a year ago.

One Thanksgiving, when I was in my early teens, one of my Grandfather’s neighbors told him that he and his family had named a turkey and started treating it like a pet. As a result they did not have the heart to kill it for their Thanksgiving dinner. He offered it to my Grandpa. My Grandpa saw this as a great opportunity to teach us grandkids about how it used to be.

We went over to the neighbor’s yard where my Grandpa set out a block to chop on and dropped a hatchet next to the block. He told me to go into the coop and grab the turkey. There he was, “Old Tweak” was his name. With a couple of my brothers we cornered him and I grabbed his legs. I dragged him out to my grandpa who was waiting with a board in his hands. He smacked Old Tweak with the board and the bird’s eyes seemed to roll around like a dazed cartoon character. While he was stunned Grandpa told me to slap Old Tweak’s head down on the block and he handed the hatchet to my brother. I was hoping to be the one to do the chopping but I had been assigned leg holding duty. I was told to not let go at all. My brother took aim and wound up for the chop. He brought the hatchet down and chopped most of the neck. There was still a piece of skin attached. Blood was shooting out like crazy. I had always heard about something running around like a chicken with its head cut off, but had never actually seen a chicken (or related bird) running around with its head cut off. I let go of the legs. I didn’t think it could actually run anywhere, since it was lying down, but would rather just kick it’s legs a bit.

I tell you now Old Tweak acted like he still had his head attached. He stood up, with a blood fountain spewing forth and his head dangling to his side, and made a run for it. My younger brothers took off after the turkey. They chased him around for about a minute then Old Tweak dropped to the turf. One of my brothers scooted towards our main course and then poked it with a stick. Upon being poked Old Tweak jumped back up and seemed to charge at Jared like a villain in a horror movie. This chase didn’t last long and Old Tweak dropped down again and kicked his legs around for a bit. Oddly enough everyone had some blood on them except for me, the person who let Tweak go. We put our future meal on the back of Grandpas truck and drove it down the street to clean it.

Cleaning a turkey is about the most unappetizing thing you can do. We dunked the bird into warm water, which was to help us pull feathers, but that made it smell like wet dog. Then, since Old Tweak was not a white turkey he had little black marks where his feathers used to be, which did not look very delicious. This all occurred the day before Thanksgiving which gave us plenty of time to forget the smell and be in the mood to eat turkey the next day. My assessment is that buying pre-slaughtered turkey is much more appetizing than the way they did it in the old days. But the old way of doing things is a lot more exciting and made for a Thanksgiving I will never forget.