Our State, November 1998, 1,511 words with sidebar

Roasting Turkey

North Carolina's favorite Thanksgiving pheasant wasn't always center stage. Corn was. So was giving thanks for the year's harvest.

By Ralph Grizzle

A few years back, a Kentucky woman was preparing her Thanksgiving turkey when her pet Chihuahua nuzzled its way into the bird's body cavity and couldn't retreat. The woman pulled the dog and shook the bird to no avail. Distraught, she dialed the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, 1-800-323-4848. The tiny dog was liberated after a Talk-Line staffer suggested carefully cutting wider the opening of the cavity.

Each November and December, the Midwest-based Butterball Turkey Talk-Line not only answers a range of questions posed by the truly uninitiated but also dispenses a cornucopia of wisdom on preparing turkey. But while the tech support department for turkey is in Illinois, it is in North Carolina that most turkeys begin their career path.

Our state ranks first in total turkey output nationwide. Before year's end, North Carolina will have raised 52 million turkeys, nearly a fifth of the national total, says Norma Gray of the Washington D.C.-based National Turkey Federation.

Those turkeys will go out to create more stories, like the one about the panic-stricken Virginian who once called the Turkey Talk-Line to ask how to thaw a fresh turkey. Or the one about the Californian who called to ask how she could remove the bleach from her turkey -- she'd scrubbed the bird as an added measure of hygiene. Then there's the story of the trucker who planned to cook his Thanksgiving turkey on the truck's engine. He called to ask if the turkey would cook faster if he drove faster.

The fact that the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line exists underscores an important truth for anyone who cares to read between the lines: Our favorite Thanksgiving pheasant can be one difficult fowl.

"Oh yes, turkey is easy to mess up," affirms Scott Prestage, vice president of the turkey division for Prestage Farms in Clinton, North Carolina. "People tend to want to overcook it." Given its low fat content, Scott says, turkey quickly dries when it's roasted too long.

Moreover, as turkey is for many the most critical dish of a Thanksgiving dinner, chefs are anxious about getting it right. "Nothing brings the family together like a good meal," says Sonny Faison, president of Warsaw, North Carolina's Carroll's Foods, which raises about 14 million turkeys annually. "And turkey is such a traditional part of that experience."

Of course, not every turkey ends up in the oven, or with a Chihuahua lodged within. Last year, North Carolina provided the White House with its National Thanksgiving Turkey. The 50-pound pheasant, raised on a farm in Raeford, never received the presidential roasting. It is now retired with other National Thanksgiving Turkeys at a 1930s working farm in Herndon, Virginia.

What About Corn?

Turkey may be the food most associated with Thanksgiving, but the whole notion of this holiday has its roots not in turkey but in corn. "Our corn did prove well, and God be praised," wrote Edward Winslow shortly following the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving in 1621. "We had a good increase of Indian corn . . . ."

The governor of the Massachusetts colony where Winslow lived was so pleased with the corn harvest that he decided to send "four men on fowling," Winslow wrote, "that so we might after a special manner rejoice altogether after we had gathered the fruit of our labors."

In the western part of our state, the Cherokee still give thanks for the corn harvest. Though no one knows for sure how long the Green Corn Ceremony has been celebrated, it probably predates Thanksgiving, as the Cherokee began raising corn about a thousand years before the birth of Christ. The ceremony continues to be celebrated during the first weekend of October.

"Traditionally this was a very important festival," says Barbara Duncan, an archivist at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. "It was the beginning of the new year. It was a time when people gave thanks for the corn crop, which they identified with the continuation of life for them and all people. It was also a time for all old scores to be settled. All grudges were put aside. Everybody made amends, forgave each other and started over. It was a ceremony that was supposed to be done before anyone ate any of the ripe corn."

North Carolina descendants of European settlers also celebrated the corn harvest with huskings, or shuckings, as some remember the ceremony. "It was really just an excuse for the community to get together and drink a little apple cider," says Ray Wheeler, who operates Atkinson Milling Company in Selma. Of course, the cider Wheeler remembers had "turned a little," as North Carolinians are fond of saying. "Everybody was pretty happy at the end of a shucking," he adds.

In the settlement once known as Wachovia, Moravians quietly gave thanks for their harvest. But they shunned such events as shuckings, because these events were perceived as parties. "The young people here in Salem were not encouraged to participate in things outside the community anyway," says Linda Benzie, spokesperson for Old Salem. "And because the corn huskings were looked at as sort of a rowdy sort of activity, the Moravians wouldn't have wanted the young people to be influenced by it."

Benzie says that one of the church journals relates the story of a couple of youngsters who snuck off to a local corn husking. They were chastised for their behavior.

Giving Thanks

Today, corn's role during Thanksgiving is a minor one. Some people still use cornmeal in their stuffing, but increasingly chefs are buying their stuffing in a box.

Perhaps vanishing, too, is the notion of giving thanks. Back in 1863, at the urging of Sarah Josepha Hale, Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday in November "as a day for national thanksgiving, praise and prayer." Today, of course, Thanksgiving is largely about feast and football. The idea of giving thanks has almost been squeezed out altogether.

John Akers, a priest at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Greensboro, recalls once being asked to do a Thanksgiving program for the Woman's Club of the University of Kentucky. "I said, 'Now do you have Jewish women in your club? If so, I'll try to make it very broad in religion.' They said, 'Oh, we don't want anything religious.' Well I'm one who says who do you thank?"

The idea of Thanksgiving implies giving thanks to someone, Akers says, "preferably to a being greater than ourselves."

No one has been so thankful for so little as a black man who was walking home with no prospect of acquiring anything to put into his oven for Thanksgiving the next morning. Suddenly, right in front of him, an animal darted out across the dusty road. Too big to be a cat, too small to be a dog. The man ran ahead and put his foot on the animal. A possum. He tucked it under his arm and headed home, stopping downtown to tell the story of his good fortune.

The November 27, 1924 issue of The Asheville Citizen recounts the story of someone asking the black man if he would sell the possum. "Sell him? I don't expect the old woman would like it if I were to sell him," the man replied. "No sir. This possum came from the Lord for poor folks' Thanksgiving dinner. Now I sure have something to be thankful for, ain't I?"

Some folks are thankful just to have the day done with and to send their relatives packing. A few years ago, that sentiment prompted Pettigrew State Park in Creswell, North Carolina, to promote a day-after-Thanksgiving hike with the slogan: "Tell Your Visiting Relatives To Take A Hike." A spokesperson at the park says she could hear people chuckling as they read the poster, but she suspects the message hit pretty close to home with some. There is such thing as having too many cooks in the kitchen.

If you're the cook in the kitchen this Thanksgiving, we wish you great success. Remember, don't overcook the turkey and throw on some corn for good measure. Remember, too, to give thanks for the abundant good that this season brings. END

Sidebar: Thanksgiving's Beginnings

North Carolinians descending from Europeans generally agree that the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621. But in the November 1996 issue of Carolina Country, Editor Michael Gery posits that an earlier Thanksgiving occurred on the North Carolina coast.

Gery's article relates the story of the exchange of food and goods between European settlers and native Americans on coastal North Carolina in the late 1500s. They feasted together a full generation before American Thanksgiving tradition officially began in Massachusetts.

Of course, it's likely that the Cherokee Indians gave thanks during their Green Corn Ceremony long before Europeans set foot on these shores - they began raising corn in 1,000 BC - making theirs perhaps the first giving of thanks in the region that would later become known as North Carolina.