Humor by John Christmann
On The Hook
Pity the poor turkey. What did that silly animal do to deserve such an ignoble place at the table on Thanksgiving?
I’ll tell you what it did: It got caught! It never learned to fly—a basic survival skill inherent to most wild birds.
But fish can’t fly either. So why don’t we have tuna on Thanksgiving? It’s a lot easier to cook.
Just how it is that turkey became the staple of Thanksgiving meals in this country? In procrastination for Thanksgiving dinner, I have done extensive research on this topic, examining thousands of documents that are just now being leaked to the public over the Internet, which I will share with you now.
No “thanks” are necessary.
It turns out the first Thanksgiving celebration was held on Thanksgiving Day sometime after English separatists landed off Cape Cod (note: there is a reason this spit of land is not known as Cape Turkey). The event coincided with an annual parade thrown by the leader of the Native American Patuxent tribe, Chief Macy.
The Pilgrims (Patuxent for “funny shoes”), led by William Bradford, settled in the port town of Plymouth, named after the automobile which was developed by a tribe of Union Americans in Detroit. The Pilgrims lived happily in Portsmouth on copious quantities of cod and Bass Ale which thrived in the Atlantic waters.
To celebrate their good fortune in the New World, Bradford organized a feast of “thanks” which was held on the day before his fort officially opened its doors for the Christmas holidays. In accordance with the celebration, the Pilgrims were obligated to invite the local Native Americans, who because John Smith married Pocahontas, were by that time in-laws.
A young bioengineering Pilgrim named Francis Perdue was selected to gather the great quantities of food needed for the celebration. Young Perdue filled the stores with genetically enhanced chicken which he called Turkey, derived from the Indian word turkey, which literally means “tastes a lot like chicken”.
To compliment his feast, Perdue rooted an abundance of wild mashed potatoes from the underbrush and picked the low lying stuffing hanging from bread trees that had been cultivated for years by Native Americans such as Martha Stewart and Bobby Flay.
Needless to say, this hormone enriched dinner menu did not go down well with certain Vegan (Native American for “difficult dinner guest”) members of the Pilgrim community, most notably Mrs. Paul, who wanted to laden the tables with free range fish sticks. A rebellion ensued in which a year’s harvest of marshmallows was angrily thrown into vats of cranberry gelatin used by the Pilgrims to dye Ambrosia (Patuxent for “slow running deer”) hides.
Despite the early difficulties, the first great “turkey day” feast of thanks was celebrated happily with only minor disruptions, mainly by Pilgrims who wanted to talk politics at the dinner table. The feast became a yearly ritual after it was discovered the celebration could be turned into a long weekend.
A couple of centuries later, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day, and wrote into law that the Dallas Fishheads should be designated as America’s team and forever play football on this day of Thanks.
But Washington being what it was, the Fishheads were renamed the Cowboys by Franklin Delano Roosevelt thanks to lobbying pressures from the beef industry who somehow missed out on Thanksgiving all together. To accommodate the longer NFL season, Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the third Thursday in November, where it stands to this day.
It was also around this time that an alien space ship crash landed in the dessert around New Mexico, and deposited a pair of Turkeys which had been abducted in the 1600s. My extensive research on the topic indicates that the wild turkey lineage can be traced to Southern Mexico in an area around the Rio Grande.
But this does little to explain why we don’t serve fish tacos on Thanksgiving.
Let’s face it; the turkey is not an appealing animal. It has a wrinkled red wattle with bristles under its neck, and is often mistaken for Al Roker. This, I suppose, explains why we must dress it for the day.
Compare this to the Mackerel, which is also mistaken for Al Roker, but takes far less time to clean and is far easier to cook and carve.
Honestly, I don’t know why we have to serve a big bird on Thanksgiving. I was hoping to grill a nice piece of salmon for all my relatives and serve it with green beans, cranberries, and a shot of Wild Turkey.
But then, I suppose I wouldn’t be able to gobble a turkey sandwich and watch the Dallas Fishheads play on TV.
I guess I really do have a lot to be thankful for!
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