The reluctant cook

By Samantha Sartain
This item appears on page 53 of the April 2014 issue.

This month’s winner is SAMANTHA SARTAIN of Colorado Springs, Colorado:

 

My dad was assigned to France Field in the Canal Zone of Panama in 1939. I was only 3 at the time, but I DO remember this.

Just before Thanksgiving that year, a friend of my mother’s got a live turkey, then began to prepare it. This entailed chloroforming it, as she just couldn’t do an axe job on it. Next she plucked out all of its feathers. That’s when she got a phone call from an old friend. 

She didn’t realize how long she had talked until said turkey, naked as the proverbial jaybird, began walking around the house, gobbling its distress loudly and vociferously.

Well, now she just couldn’t bring herself to kill it, so she knit it a sweater to wear ’til its feathers grew back!

I don’t know what happened after that. I hope it found a good home.