Lucky turkey

LITTLE ROCK — Every year, as the end of November draws near, Americans go bonkers anticipating one of the greatest events in our nation’s history. For weeks, families and friends plan where they will meet, what they will bring, and exactly what time they will start the big celebration. All gather under one roof to offer a solemn prayer for what they are about to receive: three hours of surroundsounded, flat-screened, smash-mouth football.

At our house, pretty much the same insane scenario unfolds. Consummate coordinator that she is, Joanne starts months in advance. She carefully plans every aspect of the soiree down to the smallest detail. Her younger sister is not allowed, under any circumstances, to be seated next to my lifelong buddy Leo. Leo is a staunch Democrat, so liberal that he makes Bill Clinton look like a Tea Party candidate. Her sister is an impassioned Republican. She named one ofher seven dogs Farright. But politics is not the reason for their segregation. Back in ’96, they were seated next to each other in our cozy, candle-lit dining room and, when Leo’s then-second wife wasn’t looking (this is the best description that I can get away with in a family newspaper), he let his hands . . . er . . . wander.

Most years Joanne will start sticking pastel-colored notes on the fridge even as we are finishing our pumpkin pie at the end of the preceding year’s feast. By mid-July the sticky stuff on the notes dries out and she slaps them back up with duct tape. She made a welcomed change for this year’s dinner that became obvious to her as we sat in our cozy, candle-lit dining room last year. From now on, her Uncle Alex will be joining the nieces and nephews at the children’s table.

Poor old Alex has had chronic digestive issues ever since his wife left him in ’79 and he started eating fast food three times a day. During the meal last year, he made all of us quite uneasy with his “little problem.” Joanne’s theory here was that the “kids” (our nieces and nephews, all in their early 30s) would think it’s hilarious every time he lets go, and would be so overwhelmed with adolescent laughter that they would forget to bicker back and forth across the wobbly card tables that she sets up for them on the back porch.

Not only is Joanne an OCD planner, she is also a DIYer. She spends hours weaving the personalized, 800-thread-count linen napkins, complete with the initials, birth dates and police records of everyone at the table. She is so into DIY projects that Martha Stewart calls, texts and Facebooks frequently, seeking her advice on everything from how to make DIY potpourri out of recycled flowers from the Dumpster behind the funeral home to how to cook frogmore stew.

Most holidays around our house take on what you might call a homey, if not primitive, flavor. Take Halloween, for instance. Joanne spends all summer growing her own pumpkins just so she can carve DIY jack-o’-lanterns. But since our backyard garden sits atop an abandoned toxic-waste dump, they glow in the dark all by themselves. She usually carves several hundred and gives one to every little ghost and goblin who comes to our door. It’s so heartwarming to see some sweet little munchkin hugging one of her glowing creations as he toddles back to his mommy, waiting impatiently at the curb, texting and Facebooking. Joanne smiles as she envisions her little jack-o-lanterns on their little headboards while they fall asleep bathed in the eerie green glow and gentle warmth that radiates from them even without dangerous candles burning inside.

Joanne’s preparations for Thanksgiving this year began in Earnest as we passed through Earnest, Tenn .,on vacation. Some farmer wearing a John Deere hat backwards (I told Joanne he was a farmer dude) had a roadside stand where he was selling tomatoes (which had little “grown in China” stickers on them), homemade buns, jars of honey, and cute little baby turkeys. I saw a light bulb blink above her head. Itdoes that every time we open the door of the ’83 Corolla. The yellowed plastic cover busted several years ago and the 12-volt light bulb just dangles.

She bought a dozen tomatoes and a fuzzy, chirpy, baby turkey. With nearly five months until Thanksgiving, Joanne’s theory was to fatten him up with table scraps and little veggies and berries from her glow-in-the-dark garden and-voila-we’d be sitting down to a DIY turkey dinner at her DIY Thanksgiving. She would Facebook photos of it to an envious Martha.

As the big day approached, I went out to the shop to sharpen my ax. I drug it into the kitchen looking like some B-movie psychopathic Jason wannabe wearing my heavy-duty leather gloves with the 27-inch cuffs that extended above my elbows, protective industrial-grade, smoke-tinted goggles, hard hat and heavy-duty canvas overalls. When she asked me what that was all about, I told her, “You know . . . splatters.”

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.

Her knees buckled and her head flopped forward as she collapsed into my gloved hands. We will not be having her DIY turkey. Since the city has an ordinance prohibiting the running loose of nondomestic animals in residential yards, her 57-pound turkey is confined to the garage with last year’s equally corpulent Christmas duck and two Easter bunnies.

Whoops . . . make that 29 Easter bunnies.

Bill Rausch is a freelance writer from Little Rock. Email him at williamrausch25@yahoo.com.