Author Archive for M. Toole

Thanksgiving To Be Celebrated on Mondays Next Year

(Washington) Someone’s federal government has decided to make Thanksgiving a Monday holiday in keeping with its concept of uniformity. The holiday, in which citizens give thanks for the year’s blessings, has been celebrated on Thursday since its inception in 1623.

     In 1789 George Washington issued a general proclamation for a day of thanks. That same year the Episcopal Church announced that the first Thursday in November would be a regular holiday, “unless another day be appointed by civil authorities”. In 1855 soon-to-be Confederate Virginia adopted the custom of a Thanksgiving Day. Ironically enough it was Unionist, Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed Thanksgiving as the last Thursday of the month in 1863. In 1941 Congress ruled that the fourth Thursday would be observed as a legal holiday. In Canada the holiday is celebrated in October unless the Blue Jays or Expos get into the World Series.

     “It’s that part about civil authorities that fouls up the muffins,” said one traditionalist who feels this country needs all the culture it can get.

     “Why fool with a good thing like Thanksgiving. Aren’t there more pressing social issues to deal with here?” he spat.

     Persons wishing to continue the Thursday celebration have been hereby informed that they are doing so outside the law.

     “These rogue turkey day revelers must be brought to heel,” said Congressman Oral Noise, who first penned the proposal. “The next thing you know they’ll want to celebrate the Fourth of July on the fourth of July. Bunch of damn communists!”

     Sources here feel that the population will put up a fight in the early rounds but succumb to the homogenized version of Thanksgiving before long.

     “We’ll indoctrinate the school children first and then frighten the elderly into submission,” said Noise. “And if we have further problems we’ll put a tariff on pumpkin pie.”  

– Melvin Toole

“Thanksgiving in Turkey”

Continued from in front of you

TRAVEL ’23

so that Bob (is that really his name?) and I and the kids were pushed down onto the pavement and told to keep our eyes to the ground as the entourage passed by, snaking its way toward Mount Ararat and the grave of the Apostle Paul.

     “Hey, mom,” said little Bennie, “says in this brochure that Turkey is larger than Texas. Is that for real?”

     “No, stupid, it’s just all that jihad propaganda,” piped sister Beatrice from the pruned position. “Where did you get that brochure anyway?”

     “Shut-up bitch,” said little Bennie. “Nobody’s talking to you!”

     “Now kids, let’s try to put our hatreds aside. We’re miles from our hotel and not out of this yet,” said Dad. “These people are naturally friendly and engaging. They just have to get to know us. I thought St. Paul was buried at Lookout Mountain…”

     No, that’s Buffalo Phil, fool,” said mom.

     Finally, and not without more fanfare, the procession passed. The strange men in robes told us to get up and walk to the east and we would find true enlightenment…and our hotel.

     “I wanna see Noah’s Arc,” said Beatrice, “and the ancient city of Troy. What a beat vacation. All my friends in Chicago will laugh at me if they find out I came all the way to Turkey without…”

     “Wait, daddy,” I said to my husband, “isn’t that the road to Istanbul, or is it the road to Constantinople? They must sell ottomans there. I just have to have an authentic Turkish Ottoman or I’ll just die.”

     “What about dinner?” whined Bennie. “We’ve been here three days and I haven’t seen a taco anywhere. Today is Thanksgiving. Where’s the stuffing?”

     “Now Bennie,” said my husband, whose name eludes me just now, “this isn’t America. One has to adapt. Sure, all of these rugheads wish they were in America, the land of the free, but they aren’t. They’re marooned here in Asia Minor…have been for centuries. I thought you liked the filberts in barley sauce that mom cooked up last night.”

     “I want pizza,” screamed Beatrice much to the chagrin of a large angry crowd that had now gathered, blocking our exit from behind one of a hundred mosques that crowd the cobbled square. “I hate filberts!”

     “And where is the football!” demanded little Bennie. “Don’t these Tartar savages know that it’s Thanksgiving?”

     “I hate tartar sauce too,” mumbled Beatrice, “and Kurds and whey…

     “Stop!” cried daddy. “Look a fez stand right out here in the middle of nowhere. I think we should all take home a fez as a souvenir from this lovely trip. Say there sahib. How much for four fezzes…is that the proper term? Yeah, four…and don’t try to screw me. I’m an American and I have rights.”

      At that he pulled out a U.S. fifty which the man selling the fez hats quickly grabbed and stashed in his robe. He smiled and then let go of the hats.

     “Those hats look stupid,” said Beatrice, and for once her little brother agreed. We must have looked quite the sight wandering down those snarled filthy streets, sipping a Raki looking for some familiar signs of home.

     “I have to pee,” said Bennie.

     “We need to find a halkevi, or house of the people. Surely they will have indoor facilities…

     “And cleanliness,” I crisply quipped.

     “And a make-up mirror,” added Beatrice.

     “And some good old American toilet paper,” smiled Daddy.

     “We could ask someone,”  I said melodically, swept up in the worldly banter of a man I no longer knew.

     “None of these bozos talk American,” said Bennie

     “Turkish isn’t so hard to learn,” said Dad as he wagged his finger at a would-be thief. “The Turks borrowed many Arabic and Persian words during the Ottoman Empire, then Kemal Ataturk changed the whole shootin’ match over to the Roman alphabet in 1928.”

     “How does he know all that?” whispered Beatrice in my direction.

     “Daddy was once a Middle East expert in of the Bush Administrations, dear,” I explained.

     “It’s worthless information about a country that prefers figs to cranberry sauce, olives to pumpkin pie…”

     “Shhhhh,” Bennie. Here come the mashed potatoes!”

     As I looked up I saw thousands of men in the street. There were Turks from Ankara, Turks from Izmir, Turks from Cyprus. All were working together pushing a massive vat of freshly mashed potatoes, thinly veiled in Seljuk mohair, toward the largest of the mosques to the east of the square.

     “Wow, dad!” said Bennie.

     “Where are all the women?” asked Beatrice.

     “Maybe they do celebrate Thanksgiving in Turkey,” I flinched.

     “Look, kids. Look! It’s the march of the turkeys,” said Dad. “Look, honey, their coming this way. It’s going to be a wonderful holiday just like I told you. Honey? Honey? Hey, kids, where’s your mother?

     “Oh, she was forced into that black Mercedes by two Turkish men who have been following us since yesterday,” said Beatrice.

     “What? Forced into a car? gasped Daddy.

     “Relax, man she’ll be back for dinner,” said Bennie.

– Luanne Julienne

Ms Julienne is a free-lance writer who lives in a ostentaciously large house in Connecticut. In addition to writing travel articles she raises amphetamines, which are then sold to collectors in New York at what is perceived as a healthy profit. 

Jericho Bob

by Anna Eichberg King

     Jericho Bob, when he was four years old, hoped that one day he might be allowed to eat just as much turkey as he possibly could. He was eight now, but that hope had not been realized.

     Mrs. Jericho Bob, his mother, kept hens for a living, and she expected  they would lay enough eggs in the course of time to help her son to an independent career as a bootblack.

     They lived in a tumble-down house in a waste of land near the steam cars. Besides her hens Mrs. Bob owned a goat.

     Our story has, however, nothing to do with the goat except to say he was there, and that he was on nibbling terms, not only with Jericho Bob, but with his friend, Julius Caesar Fish, and it was surprising how many old hat brims and other tidbits of clothing he could swallow during a day.

     And Mrs. Bob truly said, it was no earthly use to get something new for Jericho, even if she could afford it; for the goat browsed all over him, and had been known to carry away even a leg of his trousers.

     Jericho Bob was eight years old and his friend, Julius Caesar Fish, was nine. They were so much alike that if it hadn’t been for Jericho’s bow-legs and his turned up nose, you really could not have told them apart.

     A kindred taste for turkey also united them.

     In honor of Thanksgiving Day Mrs. Bob always sacrificed a hen which would, but for such blessed release, have died of old age.  One drumstick was given to Jericho, whose interior remained an unsatisfied void.

     Jericho has heard of turkey as a fowl larger, sweeter and more tender than hen, and about Thanksgiving time he would linger around the provision stores and gaze with open mouth at the array of turkeys hanging head downward over bushels of cranberries, as if even at that uncooked stage, they were destined for one another. And turkey was his dream.

     It was springtime, and the hens were being a credit to themselves. The goat in the yard, tied to a stake, was varying a meal of old shoe and tomato can by a nibble of fresh green grass. Mrs. Bob was laid up with rheumatism.

     “Jericho Bob!” she said to her son, shaking her red and yellow turban at him. “Jericho Bob, you go down and fetch de eggs today. Ef I find yer don’t bring me twenty-three, I’ll…well never mind what I’ll do. but you won’t like it”

     Now Jericho Bob meant to be honest, but the fact was he found twenty-four, and the twenty-fourth was so big, so remarkably big. Twenty-three eggs he brought to Mrs. Bob, but the twenty-fourth he left sinfully in charge of the discreet hen.

     On his return he met Julius Caesar Fish, with his hands in his pockets and his head extinguished by his grandfather’s fur cap. Together they went toward the hen coop and Fish spoke, or rather lisped (he had lost some of his front teeth):

     “Jericho Bob, tha’th a turkey’th egg.”

     “Yer don’t say so.”

     “I think i’th a-goin to hatch.”

     No sooner said that they heard a pick and peck in the shell.

     “Pick!” a tiny beak broke through the shell. “Peck!” more break. “Crack!” a funny little head, a long bare neck, and then “Pick, peck, crack! before them stood the funniest, fluffiest brown ball  resting on two weak little legs.

     “Hooray!” they shouted.

     “Peep!” said the turkeykin.

     “It’s mine!” Jericho Bob shouted excitedly.

     “I’th Marm Pitkin’th turkey’th; she laid it there.”

     “It’s mine, and I’m going to keep it, and next Thanksgiving I’m going ter eat him.”

     “Think yer ma’ll let you feed him up for thath? Julius Caesar asked triumphantly.

     Jericho Bob’s next Thanksgiving dinner seemed destined to be a dream. His face fell.

     “I’ll tell you wath I’ll do,” his friend said, benevolently: “I’ll keep him for you, and Thanksgivin’ we’ll go halvth.”

     Jericho resigned himself to the inevitable, and the infant turkey was borne home by his friend.

     Fish. Jr., lived next door, and the only difference in the premises was a freight-car permanently switched off before the broken down fence of the Fish yard; and in this car turkeykin took up his abode.

     I will not tell you how he grew and more than realized the hopes of his foster-fathers, nor with what impatience and anticipation they saw spring. summer and autumn pass, while they watched their Thanksgiving dinner stalk proudly up the bare yard and even hop across the railroad tracks.

     But alas! the possession of the turkey brought with it strife and discord.

     Quarrels arose between the friends as to the prospective disposal of his remains. We grieve to say that the question of who was to cook him led to blows.

     It was the day before Thanksgiving. There was a coldness between the friends which was not dispelled by the bringing of a pint of cranberries to the common store by Jericho, and the contributing thereto of a couple of cold-boiled sweet potatoes by Julius Caesar Fish.

     The friends sat on an ancient washtub in the backyard, and there was a momentary truce between them. Before them stood the freight-car, and along the track beyond, an occasional train tore down the road, which so far excited their mutual sympathy that they rose and shouted as one man.

     At the open door of the freight-car stood the unsuspecting turkey who looked meditatively out on the landscape and at the two figures on the washtub.

     One had bow-legs, a turned-up nose and a huge straw hat. The other wore a fur cap and a gentleman’s swallow-tail coat, with the tails caught up because they were too long.

     The turkey hopped out of the car and gazed confidently at his protectors. In point of size he was altogether their superior.

     “I think,” said Jericho Bob, “we’d better catch ‘im. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. Yum!”

     And he looked with great joy at the innocent, the unsuspecting fowl.

     “Butcher  Tham’th goin’ to kill ‘im for ‘uth,” Julius Caesar hastened to say, “And I can cook ‘im.”

     “No you ain’t. I’m goin’ to cook ‘im,” Jericho Bob cried resentfully. “He’s mine.”

     “He ainth; he’s mine.”

     “He was my egg,” and Jericho Bob danced defiantly at his friend.

     The turkey looked with some surprise, and became alarmed when he saw his foster-fathers clasped in an embrace more of anger than of love.

     “I’ll eat ‘im all alone!” Jericho Bob cried

     “No you sha’nt!” the other shouted.

     The turkey shrieked in terror and fled in a circle about the yard.

     “Now look yere,” said Julius Caesar, who had conquered, “we’re going to be squar. He wath your egg, but who brought him up? Me! Who’th got a friend to kill him? Me! Who’th got a fire to cook ‘im? Me! Now you get up and we’ll ketch ‘im. Ef you say another word about your egg I’ll jeth eat ‘im up all mythelf.”

     Jericho Bob was conquered. With mutual understanding they approached the turkey.

     “Come yere; come yere,” Julius Caesar said, coaxing the bird.

     For a moment the bird gazed at both, uncertain what to do.

     “Come yere,” Julius repeated,  and made a dive for him. The turkey spread his tail. Oh, didn’t he run.”

     “Now I’ve got yer!” the wicked Jericho Bob cried, and thought he had captured the fowl, when with a shriek from Jericho Bob, as the turkey knocked him over, the Thanksgiving  dinner spread his wings, rose in the air, and alighted on the roof of the freight-car.

     The turkey looked down over the edge of the car at his enemies, and they gazed up at him. Both parties surveyed the situation.

     “We’ve got ‘im,” Julius Caesar cried out exultantly. “You get on the roof, and if you can’t catch him up there I’ll kitch ‘im down here.”

     And with the help of the washtub, an old chair the older Caesar’s back and much scrambling Jericho Bob was hoisted on top of the car. The turkey now stalked solemnly up and down the roof with wings half spread.

     “I’ve got ‘er now,” Jericho Bob said, creeping slowly after him. “I’ve got yer now, sure, he was softly repeating, when with a deafening roar the express train for New York came tearing down the track.

     For what possible reason it slowed up on approaching the freight-car nobody ever knew, but one fact remains that it did just as Jericho Bob laid one wicked paw on the turkey’s tail.

     The turkey shrieked, spread its wings, shook the small black boy’s grasp from its tail, and with a mighty swoop alighted on the roof of the very last car as it passed, and in a moment more Jericho Bob’s Thanksgiving dinner has vanished, like a beautiful dream down the road.

     Now what became of that Thanksgiving dinner no one ever knew. If you happen to meet a traveling turkey without any luggage, but with a smile on his countenance, kindly send word to Jericho Bob.

     

Apology

On November 24 we incorrectly reported that Colombia was engaged in the sterilization of Pablo Escobar’s hippies when it should have read Pablo Escobar’s hippos. We are sorry if anyone became confused disoriented or contaminated by this miscue.

Turkey Lottery Cruel?

(Montrose) The proposed Turkey Lottery for next Thanksgiving has played to mixed reaction here and in other rural communities across the country.

     Saying that the birds already encounter enough stress this time of the year one critic of the concept called the measure inhumane. Supporters of the bill insist that it will create a sense of justice and put a vast segment of the turkey population out of harm’s way, for now.

     Here’s how it works: The birds will be assigned numbers based on birthdays and then draw for positions. Lower numbers will designate the dinner table while higher numbers will earn a reprieve for the year.

     “It’s as fair as anything else,” said Dag Katz, architect of the lottery. “This way the condemned can get their lives in order before November and the saved can go on with their lives without fear of a swan song with mashed potatoes and cranberries.”

     Vegetarians were not consulted on this matter and plan to boycott the entire issue.

     “What rubs my chops is that nobody has consulted the sweet potatoes or the yams,” said Toole

continued page 30   

Turkeys Off Radar

(El Lay) The nation’s turkey population appear to have retreated underground, joining remnants of elk and several hundred defiant Snickers candy bars. These two groups remain in hiding even though the dangerous fall seasons have concluded.

Hunting season and Halloween, while popular with people is often stressful and detrimental for herd and chocolate victims. Thanksgiving, one dimensional and aimed right smack at foolish birds with a few hams thrown in, is clearly genocide according to poultry rights groups here.

Meanwhile Tom Avenue is empty and generally off the grid and the vibrant turkey lounges on Giblet Alley are now dark and quiet.

Local liberals, guilty over the treatment of all three groups have attempted to coax the candy bars and elk from their redoubts but with limited success.

On a high note, Hibernation ’21 has been heralded a “breakthrough success” by the local chamber of commerce and several church groups.

-Fred Zeppelin