It took years for turkey to become palatable for me, especially in light of memories of witnessing turkey slaughters in Buena Vista, a little settlement near Mora.
Although my older siblings insist our visits to the home of Uncle Margarito Lucero were brief and sporadic, I still recall clearly an exposure to matters more agrarian than my city-slicker being should know about. And these memories appear to span several summers.
We’d visit the small farm in the summer, enjoy navigating the ditch, picking apples in the orchard and eating fresh-picked peas. We got our first bareback ride on a tired gelding named Paul. Once, on a trip to the post office, a half mile from the Lucero homestead, we noticed how Paul moped along while carrying us away from the fertile farmland and how he picked up the pace on the way back.
That gave us an idea: If Paul is walking faster on the way home, let’s speed him up even more, just like in the movies. Accordingly, my older brother, Severino, dug his heels, Gene Autry-style, into Paul’s sides, and in seconds, Paul transformed into Mine That Bird, the recent Kentucky Derby winner. Obviously, we got transferred to the ground, and Paul wouldn’t let us near him for the rest of the day.
Thanksgiving turkey, for an 8-year-old boy, was something the folks bought at Safeway, not something that’s beheaded on a tree stump, Pilgrim style.
My recollection was that the Lucero-Trujillo clan would go outside, where an ancient man, probably our uncle’s father, gathered us around to take in the Thanksgiving experience from the very start. That included having the old man sever the tom’s head with one blow from a sharp axe.
As the stern, non-avuncular senior member of the clan swung down on the well-used stump, separating the business end of the gobbler from the body, the action appeared to me as a movie. But in those day, none of us had had the benefit of watching too many shoot-’em-ups, so did I simply fool myself into thinking the killing wasn’t really happening?
At that age, and in that era, we didn’t have the high-tech, computer-assisted means to simulate things like chopping off turkey heads. Instead, we faced a lot of reality, and there was no mistake about this beheading; for some, there was no way to imagine they’d been watching a movie with Spielberg-type special effects that only seemed real.
The Pilgrim procedure took a lot less time than we expected, and some of us didn’t even know what was in store just before the axe hit the neck.
It wasn’t pretty, and I wish I could utter the disclaimer that “No turkeys were injured in the preparation of this meal.” That was the largest thing I’d ever seen killed. Still is.
There was none of that fowl running around, headless, nor a great deal of blood splashed around, no poultry in motion. Frankly, the reality of the chopping block routine didn’t faze me much, until I made the connection between what had been slaughtered, and what became dinner the next day.
Some may recall, that after the last election, Sarah Palin gave an interview at a turkey farm. Unbeknownst to the vice presidential candidate, in the background, a turkey farmer was inserting live turkeys, headfirst, into a funnel-like device that … Well, let’s not get too graphic here; this is a family newspaper.
Back in Las Vegas, I somehow re-acquired my liking for poultry. For the Thanksgiving fare at the Trujillo household, at least in the early days, there were eight of us to be fed, and I remember the ritual in which Mom practically composed a poem, a little ditty, touting the culinary heaven I, the youngest, was about to enter, by being offered the turkey … neck. With other family members chiming in about “How lucky Mannie (my nickname) is: he gets the neck” — I almost became convinced I’d lucked out through that gastronomic bonanza. Of course, my plunging into poultry paradise purportedly made me the envy of my siblings, forced to eat drumsticks, thighs, wings and breasts.
And so magnanimous were my brother and sisters that if I ever offered to trade the neck for someone else’s turkey part, they declined, ostensibly not wishing to deprive me of the choicest turkey part. Dad and Mom, obviously, sacrificed by leaving the white turkey breast for themselves. It’s been hard to thank all of them enough for their thoughtfulness.
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A few years back, I wrote a column headlined “Why is everything alphabetical?” a lament, yet a clear recollection of the way our homeroom teacher, Sister Sehr Verfressen, knew no other way of lining us up but alphabetically. Why must dealing with people always involve only the alphabet? Why can’t the nun say, “OK, everybody, line up alphabetically by height” or simply by height, or by IQ?
Usually, when it came to working out math problems or diagramming sentences on the blackboard, having the Aragones, Abeytas and Archuletas go first was no big deal. My surname, close to the end of the alphabet, gave me the confidence that my turn might not arrive until summer vacation.
What was a big deal was waiting in line for 16 hours, while those high up in the alphabet queued up for Thanksgiving lunch. It was agonizing, but better expressed in the words I wrote in the original column Sept. 4, 2003:
“I was at first elated when our home-room teacher at Immaculate Conception School announced that our class would line up alphabetically for our Thanksgiving lunch. ‘Arthur, get back with the T’s; we’re lining up by last name, not first name,’ Sister said.
“Stanley Allen, Joe Alarcon, Mary Lou Barela and Fred Cordova got the great pickings that November in the 1940s: drumsticks, breasts, stuffing and cranberries. Those in my group got the wings and gizzards, and something green. By the time Joseph Wasson, Sef Valdez and Martha Ulibarri got up to the serving line, about all that remained were feathers and the gobble.”
• • •
There are only two kinds of people: those who prefer the dark turkey meat, and the weirdos who like white.
Well guess what. Nobody in my wife’s family dares even touch dark turkey meat. Looks like a drumstick feast for me.
That’ll last all year.
I was always stuck between Martinez and Montoya at San Antonio Grade School. I always got the neck, too, (chicken neck) but the prize for me was the brains. People will tell you that chickens don’t have brains but I’ve cracked open the skull and eaten them many times. Not half bad. Taste a lot like chicken.
Hi, Ben:
I hadn’t seen this comment. However, I must say that eating brains of any kind is really eating as if it’s penance. When they raised cattle, my in-laws used to eat brains. Gross! I don’t recall any of their children or grand-children joining them. A form of penance. Yes! “And for your penance, eat a half pound of calf brains and make a perfect skillet of scrambled eggs.”