Our Thanksgiving began with shopping at the Union Square Farmer’s Market. My mother asked me to meet her there to assist with the selection and more to the point the transportation of the big bird back to Brooklyn. We interviewed the lady at the organic turkey stand quite extensively. She told us that her turkeys had been fed only “fresh grasses and wholesome grains. Absolutely no GMO corn!” When I told her what I had read in Michael Pollan’s book about so-called free-range chickens having about a single square foot of “range” with nothing growing on it and a tiny door that led to this nowhere land offering no incentive to the bird to make the effort to go out, she replied that her turkeys did not spend time in cages and “were allowed to have not only their dignity but a well-rounded life.” This comment led me to describe the life of our
bird before passing his parts at dinner as being one of resort-style luxury: his own grassy pasture shared only with non-aggressive friends who would get together for picnicking and square dancing, or touch football with the guys. To make a meaningful contrast I described the real-life “chicken factory” soccer field in Queens where my team would sometimes play located next to a filthy barbed-wire coop where we could see the blood spurting from the neck splicing blades. Our actual selection at the Union Square market was a 16 pound bird, which required a big body-centered effort on my behalf to get home.
My musician cousin, aged 30, and his girlfriend came early to help with food preparation. Unfortunately, my dad, who is useless as a cook, could not remember when he put the bird in the oven, which led my cousin to open the oven door every five minutes because, as he said, “there is nothing worse than a dried-out turkey except for landslides and volcanic eruptions in populated areas.” Opening the oven door a thousand times meant that the total cooking time was about ten hours. We ate at 9 pm. Fortunately, my mother had made apple tarts the night before. Otherwise they would have been iced with turkey drippings. There was great physicality in the chopping and slicing of various meats and vegetables and also in the sporadic dancing to different people’s Ipods with music ranging from lil’ Wayne to Billy Joel to Carlos Santana to Earth, Wind, and Fire, to Aretha Franklin to salsa music. My brother’s basketball team had all taken salsa classes after the season to stay in shape so he demonstrated the technique for any interested guests. Since my mother had cut her hand quite badly on a knife my dad had just sharpened for the occasion, all the rest of us did a lot more work that we were not actually all that qualified to do. My brother made a huge mess making sweet and un-sweet plantains based on the fact that at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia he works with a lot of Dominicans who share their delicious plantains with him. Unfortunately, he did not have their recipe or bloodline. The sweet ones were definitely superior to the un-sweet ones, but there were leftovers which was not the case with the other edible contributions.
The actual feast was a sit-down dinner of twelve around a table that can seat six in comfort. The candles hid all the spills that came from wild elbows and absolutely no spaces between foods. I remember that it was noisy and laugh-filled and extremely relaxed since there were no grandparents to impress or difficult family members or friends to make us watch our language. My dad actually began the meal with a toast to
everyone for being people he liked looking at.
After dinner many of us watched the Jets beat the Bengals. Despite great feelings of heaviosity from overeating, there was some movement in our chairs due to Brad Smith’s kickoff return for a touchdown. We also played some minipool, which requires quite a lot of maneuvering due to the smallness of the table and the normal sized cues. We then ate the apple tarts and cakes guests had brought having had some necessary timeout from eating. After dessert there was no further possibility of body movement.
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