The Texas Turkey

Neil Harvey

The Christmas season was fast approaching.  The year was 1944, the war in Europe and the Pacific had swung in favor of the Allies, and the holiday mood was upbeat and festive in Dallas, Texas.

In those days, I was the foreman, laborer, and chief chicken plucker and poop scooper for the Harvey family Poultry Enterprises.  My family was going to move into a more fashionable part of Dallas, and our wartime chicken-raising project would not be tolerated in the new neighborhood.  I had butchered and dressed out all the fryers for our customers.  Dad sold off the turkeys, laying hens, and George, the rooster, to a neighbor.

My grandmother, Nanna, who had lost her sight and lived with us, sat in the shade of our willow tree and plucked the feathers from the chickens I had butchered.  Nanna had been raised in the 1880s on the Kansas plains and never shirked the drudgery of any menial job.  She was an expert on all of the household skills like gardening, bread-making, and canning – skills needed to survive on the American Western frontier.  She was an authentic pioneer woman.  (More…)