Installed a new microwave in the kitchen today and it made me think of my old high school buddy Faron. We were roommates for a time after graduation and had a little crackerbox of a house over by the state prison.
He played bass guitar and I had just switched from guitar to keyboards. We had some practice sessions that never really came to anything, but he was a great wood-worker. He built some arena-concert-sized speakers that wound up attached to our living room stereo when we gave up the band idea. There was a microwave in the kitchen.
That was a pretty new appliance back then (not to date myself, but I suppose I just did…). When the glass-lined door was opened it revealed a cooking area about the size of a shoebox. Next to the door handle was a big round clock-dial to set the minutes and a big square button to set off the nuclear cooking.
Not that we did much of that.
As one of his home improvement projects, Faron brought back some rough-sawn cedar and hauled it into the living room and set it down where the couch might have been if we’d had one. (I had never heard the term rough-sawn at that stage of my life, and I don’t believe I’ve had occasion to repeat it since then – until now.) Faron took that wood and measured and cut and nailed. He added some decorative trim and then cut holes and added plumbing, somehow.
We were the only eighteen-year olds in town with a personal wet-bar in our living room. It was a thing of beauty.
It might have been our frequenting that part of our abode that led to the chicken-rustling incident. We were tapped, financially, and we were coming into the holiday season. For both of us, it was the first independent observation of the big three holidays. Money, as I mentioned, was tight.
New Year’s would be taken care of. (You haven’t forgotten the wet bar in our living room already, have you?)
Christmas would be tougher for Faron than for me. He had a girlfriend, requiring a present. I – on the other hand – had no social life of that sort, and could plead poverty with my family in the way that I have since perfected. He was making time-payments on the gift.
Thanksgiving would naturally be spent with our separate families, but – being the first of the Big Three – we both thought it appropriate that we have some sort of moderate feast, if only to put the bar to good use.
Chicken-rustling isn’t exactly accurate. They were turkeys in those buildings. I had no idea such things went on, but somehow Faron had discovered that a farmer south of town had signed an agreement with Campbell’s Soup and had several long, narrow buildings filled with those big birds. Apparently, Campbell’s Soup would back up a truck filled with tiny turkey chicks and herd them into the stock-barns, then – after they were shoulder to shoulder and jostling around for dancing room – the trucks would return and pick them all up. They wouldn’t miss one turkey, Faron said.
Faron: They won’t miss one turkey!
Me: Are they in plastic wrappers?
Faron, laughing – thinking I was joking: Yeah, sure. Frozen and sliding around like hockey pucks.
Me: Maybe you should take an ice chest.
Faron, laughing – thinking I was joking: Okay, buddy. One Thanksgiving turkey on ice, comin’ up!
Me: I don’t suppose they’ve got the boxed dressing mix, too…
Faron brought back a bird. It wasn’t a turkey. Those, as you well know, are the Butterball things with the pop-up timers built in, with gizzards and such in a bag in the middle. This thing – well, it was a bird. Feathers. Feet. Spindly legs.
By the time it made it into the kitchen, though, Faron had worked some kind of culinary-prep magic on it. I knew he was a fisherman. Apparently, there was hunter in his DNA as well. It may have been lacking plastic wrap, but Faron had plucked and cleaned the bird until I recognized it as something cook-able. (Not to imply that I had ever cooked a turkey at that point. Or even a pot roast. Hey! We were eighteen and on our own, and had a wet bar in the living room!)
It barely fit into the new microwave.
We had no dishes or plates that would accommodate such a cooking endeavor, so I improvised. The bird went into a black plastic trash bag, all dashed and splashed with spices and aromatic things. I left an opening, figuring that there might be steam and a need to vent. Microwave ovens didn’t have instructions about Thanksgiving turkey preparation back then. (Still don’t.)
All those visits to my grandmother’s house gave me the foundation: I knew it took a long time to cook a turkey. My mother and her mother got up early. We ate late in the day. I figured that this new microwave thing would cut down some of that time. Maybe half. I set the timer.
There was a smell before the realization hit. When Faron and I yanked the bag out of the micro, the plastic was clinging. We pulled it open and looked inside.
A big black charcoal briquette sat where the bird once was. I’ve had Thanksgiving turkey that was a little dry. This was dryness that was a little turkey. We opted for burgers and onion rings at the new Sonic.
There aren’t many calls for a microwave with the menu here at the store, but for emergencies, thawing, and the like – it’s good to have one. I made a plate of nachos with the newly installed appliance, the shiny stainless steel one, and based the cooking time from experience with the old one. They came out a little more edible than the turkey was – but it is clear that technology has improved. Bam! Cheese melted!
Styrofoam plate, too.
Faron told me the farmer chased him all the way back to the road while he kept that angry bird under his arm. Over the years, my memory has embellished his story. I’m not even sure what the truth is, but as I recall, the turkey-man was wielding a shotgun, or a hatchet, or a carving knife. Faron escaped.
The granite stone over his grave has a notation: Free Spirit. That he was. Faron died in a car crash just shy of twenty years ago. A roommate and bandmate and friend, for altogether too short a time.
Here’s a promise. There won’t be any trash bags filled with turkey birds inserted into this new oven, but I’m sure to remember that holiday season – as I always do, each time that part of the year comes ‘round.
No turkey on the menu here. Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main, Broken Arrow OK!
