A Turkey Tribute

By Kelly McManus

November 2024

Beaky, Dad’s childhood pet turkey, played such a huge part in my own childhood Thanksgiving memories that I was shocked to realize recently that Dad had never dedicated a book to him. There is a short remembrance in the only memoir Dad ever wrote in the prelude to Aunt Patricia’s (the Troll) recipes in Whatchagot Stew. And there are various references here and there, but nothing significant until we found an old blog Dad wrote back in November 2007. Apparently Dad’s annual tributes to Beaky were mainly limited to the family as we gathered around the table on Thanksgiving trying to enjoy the lovely turkey dinner Mom had prepared. That’s probably a good thing. No one could tell a story like Dad, and I’m here to attest that all of his four daughters have been traumatized about eating turkey ever since.

For a farm boy, Dad always had a weak stomach and he hated killing things. Yes, he was also a hunter, but that might have been part of the reason he was such a notoriously unlucky hunter. The McManus daughters were very happy he was so unlucky because if he ever actually killed something, we would be eating it for months on end, and not a scrap would be wasted. Frankly, some scraps deserve to be wasted. Sixty years later, I still shudder remembering Mom’s stuffed venison heart. I’m sure the combination of Beaky Thanksgiving stories and Mom’s stuffed venison heart is what drove one of my sisters to become a life-long vegetarian.

Dad’s queasiness about eating pet turkeys also extended to eggs. After all, he had raised the beloved Beaky from an egg. I spent my childhood eating breakfast behind a cereal box wall because I had the audacity to like over-easy eggs. Despite the fact that Dad could not see what I was eating behind my flimsy wall, he seldom sat at the breakfast table with us when we had eggs. He couldn’t stomach the sound of me eating them and perhaps slurping slightly for dramatic affect. The more teachable people in the family were trained to eat eggs the way he liked his eggs—scrambled HARD. It still makes me smile nostalgically when Peggy and I go out for breakfast and she orders her eggs scrambled HARD. They never are hard enough for her, so she rarely eats them, but at least she doesn’t make me sit behind cereal boxes. And I, for my part, try to keep my slurping to a minimum.

Peggy and I are sharing Dad’s 2007 essay about Beaky this Thanksgiving season for you to enjoy and perhaps read to your children during their Thanksgiving dinner. Granted, the turkey cook will never forgive you and your little ones might shed a tear, but the important thing is that the legacy of Beaky will live on. Cheers to Beaky! Long gone, but never forgotten!

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McManus Recipe of the Month

Our family generally ate simple foods, so something as fancy as Ambrosia Salad seemed out of place on our dinner table. Nonetheless, it was served at every holiday dinner. Somewhere along the line we started calling it Foo Foo Salad. I guess that was our way of acknowledging just how high class we thought it was. Foo Foo Salad

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Pat's Quote of the Month

This quote will help you understand just how simply we ate and why we though Foo Foo Salad was such a fancy treat.: “Smoked carp tastes just as good as smoked salmon when you ain't got no smoked salmon." 

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Pat's Yarns

For the Love of Beaky, By Pat McManus