April 17, 2006

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That time some scraggly woodsman gave me a frozen turkey

I approached the Bethesda Giant (the mid-range supermarket chain that owns Peapod) last night with a smallish list of items necessary to tide me over until the next big grocery run. My grocery runs are usually of epic proportions, often happen very late at night, almost always feature the wonderful Harris Teeter as my destination, and result in the cooking of many delicious meals in the ensuing week or two. Last night was not such an occasion, though it will result in at least one delicious meal (the leftovers of which may last for the ensuing week or two).

When I pulled into the parking lot of the Giant, I could tell something was amiss. There were only a couple cars. A bad sign. I walked up to the door, and an employee standing outside smoking and waiting for a ride explained that apparently a lot of people in this country believe that, a long time ago on this day, some dead Jewish guy walked out of this little cave and said, "See? I told you so," a short time before flying away into the sky never to be seen again except in nachos and hot chocolate, and because of that, the Giant closed at 8:00pm.

Okay. Well, ten-thousand years ago on this day, this ancient Mesopotamian man was having a really bad day, and needed to buy a bottle of Thunderbird at 9:00pm to drown his sorrows, but all the Giants in the fertile crescent were closed, so instead he invented writing and and actually improved the world. In His honor, I say we should go ahead and keep the grocery stores open until their normal closing time.

Oh well. Moving on... the employee's explanation only lasted a few seconds, after which I noticed a scraggly old man, standing nearby, staring at me. The guy was maybe sixty years old, with a long, stringy white beard and peppered hair, sun-hardened skin, and a dirty gray t-shirt covering his wiry body. And he was looking right at me. As soon as I made eye contact, he said to me in a deep, raspy Southern voice, "You want a turkey?"

I stared at him for a second, and finally asked, "What?"

He looked me up and down. "I said, do you want a turkey? I got this frozen turkey, and I'll give it to you if you want it." At that point he gestured behind my left shoulder.

I turned around and looked, and right behind me was a large trashcan with a flat-topped lid, on top of which was a large, frozen turkey wrapped in grocery bags.

"So," he repeated. "You want it? I ain't gonna use it."

So I said, "Well, thanks, but I think there are probably people who need it more than me."

He shook his head. "Nah. I done asked five or six other people, and no one wants to take it. So if you can use it, you take it. Give it to some family, or just cook it up and eat it yourself."

Ever the skeptic, especially when hobo-looking men try to give me items of value, I asked, "Why don't you cook it up and eat it?"

He looked off into the distance momentarily before saying, "Nah. I do all my cooking out in the woods. So I got this turkey and I can't use it. Why don't you take it?"

At that point I moved closer to the turkey and felt it. It hadn't begun thawing. And then I looked over to the store employee with a questioning glance. He nodded his head, which I interpreted as confirming that the guy had just bought the turkey and that it was okay for me take it and eat it. In retrospect, he may have been nodding to say, "Yeah, the guy's absolutely crazy," and not in any way sanctioning the turkey donation.

So I was confronted with a dilemma. To take the sketchiest turkey in history, or not to take the sketchiest turkey in history. And well... if there's one thing I'm sure of it's that there is a depressed Mesopotamian man in heaven watching over us and saving us from our illiterate sins. But if there are two things I'm sure about, the second is that I would never pass up a free opportunity to cook something delicious. So of course, I took the turkey, and thanked the man.

As I was walking back to my car, without milk, sugar, or laundry detergent, but with a large, frozen turkey, he yelled at me, "Happy Thanksgiving," and then cackled. It occurred to me then to take a picture of him, but when I turned around, he was gone. Seriously.

So now I've got this big turkey thawing in my kitchen. Do you know how much turkey is in a turkey? I mean... it's a shitload of turkey. It's somewhere between ten and fifteen pounds. The weight isn't labeled, and I don't have a scale. Cooking times for such beasts are based on weight, so I considered constructing an elaborate balance to use physics to determine the turkey's weight based on the fixed mass of a 2-pound bag of flour. Then I remembered that it was a FREE turkey given to me by a cackling woodsman outside a closed grocery store. If it comes out a bit dry, oh well.

I'm not sure how much a turkey costs, but I'm pretty sure it's more than $0. So I think I'm making out pretty well on this one. Of course there's always the chance that my philanthropic Appalachian friend poisoned it or something, but I figure the head-nod of a sixteen year-old chain-smoking bag boy who may or may not have been hired because he is slightly mentally handicapped is probably just as safe as FDA approval.

So look out world, because a ten to fifteen pound turkey is coming your way, courtesy of a possibly-homeless mountain man whose campfire apparently lacks the facilities for cooking such a bird. And when I'm savoring the perfectly roasted meat, crispy skin, and flavorful gravy, I'll make sure to bow my head and give thanks to our depressive Mesopotamian god for his gifts of poetry and poultry. Happy Easter, kids. This world is insane.

Posted at April 17, 2006 5:53 AM | Comments (7)

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