Talkin' Turkey

The summer I was 18, my parents took a vacation with my sister and left me at home. I had a job and couldn't get off (I didn't try very hard), and was considered responsible enough to stay alone for a week or two. It was awesome. My friends and I built a ramp the second my parent's truck rounded the corner, and I was free to lie around the house, watch TV during the day, and generally get a taste of what life would soon be like with no parents around. Well, in a much nicer house then I would ever have.

I had to make all my own meals, which wasn't really that big a deal. I could cook, and had enough money from my paycheck and whatever my parents left me that I could eat in Bradenton's finest restaurants. Also, I could drink Coke (well, Publix cola) for every meal to give me extra energy for skating and watching TV.

One afternoon I was in the garage, looking for something to do when I decided to check the refrigerator. My sister and I generally stayed away from the garage refrigerator, because it would occasionally give you a nasty little shock if you weren't properly grounded, and really, who needed the hassle?

But today, I would have gladly taken the shock when I saw what was waiting for me in the freezer. A whole turkey, all wrapped up and ready to cook.

Now, I love turkey. Love it. Love carving it up, love sneaking bites while everyone else is looking away, love leftover Thanksgiving sandwiches, just love the stuff. I'd say my turkey love is second to none, but I'm pretty sure I'm way down on that list.

So naturally, I had to cook that turkey. No more Wendy's salad bar buffets. I could save my money and have a Thanksgiving feast for the rest of the week. I bought mashed potatoes, dressing, all the ingredients I could find. I also invited my girlfriend over for the next day. I mean, what is more romantic than a Thanksgiving feast? Nothing. That's what. Nothing.

I was up early the next morning. I remembered that from my parents cooking turkey. I kept the bird in the refrigerator overnight, figuring that would be enough to thaw it out.

It still felt about as frozen as when I first discovered it, so I ran water over it. I thought I remembered seeing them do that. Then I set the oven for whatever the turkey wrapper told me.

Listening to NPR during Thanksgiving drives in the years since, I've learned about the Turkey Hotline, where you can call and get advice on how to cook your turkey. I didn't know about that then, and even if I did, I don't know if they staff the phones in the middle of summer.

So I had to wing it. After soaking it for a while, I set it in the oven. It was still frozen, but the oven would take care of that.

Hours later, the turkey still seemed kind of hard, but I was definitely making progress. I concentrated on the other aspects of my feast.

When dinnertime came around, the inner part of the turkey was still sort of frozen, even after about 9 hours in the oven, but it was just the two of us. We probably wouldn't get that far into the bird's insides, especially after the romance of the roasted turkey overtook us. And yeah, parts of the turkey looked a little pink and rubbery, almost raw, but we could easily avoid those parts. No problem.

Whenever I got hungry over the next few days, I'd take a big hunk out of the turkey with my hands, feeling like a Viking. I did notice a weird smell throughout the house, but I was an 18 year old guy living on my own. I just thought it was natural.

When my parents got home the next week, the first thing my dad said was, "What's that smell?"
I just figured it was me living in my own filth, so didn't say anything, but my parents seemed really concerned, walking around sniffing the air like hound dogs.

They located the culprit fairly quickly. Apparently you're not supposed to cook an unfrozen turkey. But if you must, you have to cook it completely. I didn't even really notice the toxic clouds of salmonella leaking from the refrigerator. I just figured the smell was just me skating all day and being lackadaisical about showers. And yeah, after they pointed it out to me, the insides of the turkey did look sort of black.

It's a wonder I wasn't dead or full of food poisoning, but I guess that can be attributed to having a teenaged cast-iron stomach. Now just thinking about that turkey is enough to give me the dry heaves.

You would think that an experience like that would keep me away from turkey for a while, but I'm happy to report that I didn't learn a thing from the experience and am still as deeply in love with turkey as I was as a teenager. Some things are eternal.

The Coldest Winter Ever

It can get cold in Florida. I realize I've already lost a good portion of you with that statement, but it's true. Most of the houses I've lived in were built before the invention of insulation and had spaces around the windows and doors that let in gusts of arctic air, so you really notice when the temperature gets low. We also don't have a lot of cold weather clothes. Well, maybe some people do. On my first trip to Chicago I had one glove that I would turn inside out and switch back and forth depending on which hand was cold, sort of like a hobo Michael Jackson.

I think I've mentioned my post-college nighttime heating system, where I had an ancient space heater with a duct taped cord propped on a milk crate and a board about an inch away from my feet. That was dangerous but highly effective, and it was like a greenhouse in the Amazon compared to the Storm of the Century.

What was the Storm of the Century? Well, every couple years the weather will get weird for a couple days and local newscasters will throw the label around as frantically as national news throws around  Trial of the Century or whatever-Gate. But the specific one I remember was in the early '90s, a wonderful and magical time.

I was driving the band Spoke around on a mini-Florida tour over Spring Break*. It was pretty fun. The last night of the tour was in Sarasota, close to my parent's home in Bradenton. The day before in Miami most of us had gotten really, really sunburned. I was also pretty fevery from some sort of sinus infection or the grippe or smallpox or something.

Naturally, it being a punk show, the starting time of 11 really meant closer to 2, and by the time Spoke was over, I was done. I was a man, and a dude, but I was going home to sleep in my own bed that night, instead of trying to doze off on some cat-stained couch while Misfits bootlegs blared in another room. The other guys could pick me up tomorrow.

It was raining pretty heavily as I drove home, and the sky was a strange glowing purple color, but I didn't care. I was shaking with chills and I was going to sleep in my actual bed.

After about three hours of sleep my dad woke me up.

"You've got to move your car." 

The river had risen in the early morning and had flooded my car. It was close to coming in the house, pretty remarkable since we were 3 houses down from the actual water.

So I moved my car to higher ground, then spent a few non-sleeping, sunburnt, feverish hours moving furniture and ...I dunno, sandbags? No, we probably didn't have sandbags.

Proof that everything written on this blog is 100 percent true and not exaggerated at all.

P

The band picked me up in the early afternoon. The rain had stopped for the most part, but we had to dodge limbs and street signs falling in the road, then we saw a car explode on the side of the interstate. It was some real Mad Max shit. I was still struck with the brain fever in the back seat with the drums and possibly a couple other people. I can't remember. I do remember a long tunnel with light at the end of it. My Aunt Tiny was talking to me. It was nice.

We finally made it home. While the storm spared Gainesville for the most part, it brought an unseasonable cold snap and managed to knock out the power in our neighborhood. Since they were in a band, the other guys had girls who would put them up and vanished, deserting me as quickly as I deserted them the night before. It was still Spring Break**, so there weren't that many people around.

In fact, out of the nine people who lived in our house, only Dave Frank, my next door neighbor, was around. With no electricity and no roommates, it was very quiet. And cold. Very, very cold. We could see our breath inside, something Floridians should never experience. The only source of heat we had was an old voodoo candle I bought in Ybor City years ago. Dave and I huddled around the flickering candle watching the sun slowly set, knowing we would soon be dead, sort of like the final scene in The Thing.


We were half thinking about gathering up whatever wooden items we had in our apartments and building a fire in the oven (which probably wasn't even in the top five of bad ideas that we came up with in the year that we lived in that house), but it seemed like too much work. Plus, my Aunt Tiny was telling me about a wonderful place where I'd see her and all my old pets again, so it was sort of hard to concentrate.


Actually, after a few hours Dave called some friends we knew in the dorms and we spent the night hanging out with girls and watching cable, but I swear we were only minutes away from leaving two frozen corpses for our roommates to find later and feel really bad about.







* SPRING BREAK!! WHOOOOOO!!!!!

** WHOOOOO!!!!!