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LETTER FROM BOBOLINK FARM
WE GATHER TOGETHER
By Barbara Tatham Johnson
For the next three or four minutes Moulder did not speak a word. The turkey
was on his mind, with the stuffing, the gravy, the liver, the breast, the
wings, and the legs. He stood up to carve it, and while he was at work he
looked at it as though his two eyes were hardly sufficient. He did not help
first one person and then another, so ending by himself; but he cut up
artistically as much as might probably be consumed, and located the
fragments in small heaps or shares in the hot gravy; and then, having made a
partition of the spoils, he served it out with unerring impartiality. To
have robbed anyone of his or her fair slice of the breast would, in his
mind, have been gross dishonesty.
“And how does it taste?” asked Moulder.
“Like melted diamonds,” said Mrs. Moulder, who was not without a touch of
poetry.
“Ah, there’s nothing like hanging of ’em long enough, and watching of ’em
well. It’s that vinegar as done it” and then they went seriously to work,
and there was nothing more said of any importance until the eating was
nearly over.
—Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm
I recognize the heart is as much involved with a meal focused on roast
turkey as is the appetite. Anthony Trollope captures the sensuality of
dining on THE bird. In America and Canada, roast turkey is the centerpiece
for gatherings that celebrate harvest plenty and reunion. The aroma of the
roasting bird intermingled with the perfume of spices, hot pies, and cooking
vegetables defines the best of all meals for me. The deeply browned skin
edging each slice of breast meat or surrounding the thighs and wings submits
to the flow of rich gravy in an intermingling of crispness and smoothness
that is delectable. Cranberry sauce spikes the stuffing and vegetables with
pleasant tartness. Forks full of buttery mashed potatoes with clinging peas
enveloped in gravy slide down the throat in an instant. Spirits rise with
the clatter of silverware and dishes, the ring of glasses touching in toast,
and mouths full of delicious turkey. This, of course, is my personal
impression of Thanksgiving dinner. A finicky eater as a child, roast turkey
was the one meat I liked, and the happy noisy gathering of family enhanced
my enjoyment.
Turkey dinners are a long tradition in the western world. In America, where
the bird originated, the human urge to improve upon nature resulted in a
variety of turkey types with the interbreeding of wild and domestic birds.
By the early nineteenth century, several breeds became local favorites. The
Narragansett was a favorite turkey in New England. Developed in Rhode
Island, these birds with dark feathers finely marked with white and black
had a grayish appearance. The breed’s plump breast and early maturity
enhanced its popularity. This breed and the domestic Bronze turkey,
developed in England, became the centerpieces of New England Thanksgiving
feasts. Farmers in the northeastern states raised great flocks of these
birds and drove them to city markets as Thanksgiving Day approached. A
granddaughter of the builder and first landlord of the Old Munroe Tavern in
Lexington, Massachusetts recalled, as a very old woman, “The turkeys, driven
in flocks through the roads to the Boston markets just before Thanksgiving,
would roost in the trees, and on the tavern, and its out buildings if the
farmers were fortunate enough to make the tavern before sunset. If not, they
roosted somewhere up the road, compelling the drivers to go back for them in
the morning.”
Many families, if they had a good-sized yard, fattened their own holiday
turkey. This “recipe” for plumping turkeys appeared in a popular
nineteenth-century monthly newspaper The Household. “Every morning for a
month, give [the turkey] mashed potatoes mixed with buckwheat flour, barley
or beans; take away what remains in the evening. After a month, add half a
dozen balls made of barley flour, when they go to roost. Give them these
eight days successively; turkeys thus fed are fat and good.”
The breeding, feeding, and romance, if you will, of creating bigger and
better types enhanced the popularity of turkey as the focus of delectable
eating. Inevitably, industrialization of turkey production filled the
demand. Douglas Unger, in his novel The Turkey War portrays the period
during the Second World War when local turkey plants became factories
capable of processing hundreds of thousands of turkeys each week. Mose
Johnson, the chief yardman at a commercial turkey plant in the fictional
Nowell, South Dakota just before the war, experiments with turkey breeding
to develop a superior bird.
One of the ambitions Mose had had for years
was to create his own particular breed of turkey and call it the Johnson. He
started the venture with a huge Bourbon Red tom turkey he bought from a
grower named Jake Ballock for the unheard-of price of ten dollars. That tom
was one of the largest Mose had ever seen, weighing about forty-five pounds
in his peak year. He stood waist high to Mose, a gleaming rust-red bird…Mose
crossbred that Bourbon Red tom with his select group of hens—the dark-gay
Slate, the black English, the Narragansett…the pure White Holland, and the
Bronze.
Mose Johnson’s efforts end with an official shift in the company’s policy
for buying turkeys. “In order to achieve a national reputation for the
uniform quality of our products,” the company will buy only the large White
Holland type developed by a government research team in Beltsville,
Maryland, and by a group of scientists at an agricultural college in Texas.
In time, the superior marketable qualities of the White Holland Turkey (That
their pin feathers are light and do not leave unappetizing dark stubs as
darker colored turkey’s pin feathers do, was a major plus.) pushed the
availability of the older breeds to smaller local markets. Industrialization
means that turkey, available year round as processed hams, franks, deli
meats, and frozen dinners, as well as whole birds, fresh and frozen, need
not grace only the celebratory feasts these days.
In his essay “Spaghetti Carbonara Day,” Calvin Trillin states “that turkey
is basically something college dormitories use to punish students hanging
around on Sunday,” and he presents a more than facetious argument to choose
pasta over the bird on Thanksgiving Day. Recently, the ultimate obscenity
found its way to table as whole turkey deep fat fried.
I understand the contemporary focus on quick, efficient eating. Preparing a
twenty-pound bird requires time and lots of clean up. What to do with
leftovers from the meal presents another set of challenges. Although I
enjoyed the hot roast turkey and trimmings as a girl, I dreaded the
following week’s meals of warmed over breast and stuffing with thinned
surplus gravy, hash from the remaining meat scraps, and soup made from the
turkey carcass.
I have invested a lifetime of experience in traditional Thanksgiving
celebrations. My husband and I drove many hours and miles each year to
return with our children to the happy family feast. When I prepared the
family Thanksgiving meal for our eldest son’s return from his initial months
of college, I lavished attention on all the cooking details. The joy of
reunion enhanced my efforts, and the memory of that particular Thanksgiving
remains among my dearest.
My mother-in-law’s last Thanksgiving was at our home in Monmouth. She was
experiencing a brief respite from cancer treatments, and the family gathered
from near and far. As we collected the generations from play and chat and
found our seats at the table, she called our attention to the scene outdoors
and for several minutes we silently watched snow falling gently against a
backdrop of evergreens. The sight might have seemed clichéd at any other
time. At that moment, the lovely wintry scene focused our emotions on the
pricelessness of simple beautiful sights. Soon we were eating and talking
with gusto, but each, at one time or another, turned to watch the beauty
outside with quiet thoughts of thanks.
Perhaps in the final analysis, the kind of turkey we serve (or what we
choose to substitute) on the fourth Thursday in November of each year is
less important than the gathering of family and friends. Yet, for those of
us who want rich savoriness, nothing tops the deeply browned, stuffed,
roasted turkey hot from the oven. 
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