No gobble gobble for Thanksgiving

Growing up during the Great Depression era, I had never seen a turkey let alone eaten it. Today turkey sandwiches are a common day food.

The first time I ate turkey, while I was in World War II in the U.S. Navy in 1944, while our ship the U.S.S. LST 582 was in the sea port of Hollandia New Guinea. I saw the wooden crates of frozen stiff turkeys that had been frozen several years before. I was 20 years old at the time. I was never too crazy about chicken, so turkey didn’t move me much.

My father was a rabbit hunter, and we had a rabbit meal each Thanksgiving, which I certainly did not look forward to. I would watch him dress the rabbit, rather undress it. He would hang the dead rabbit by a leg from the branch of our backyard tree and proceed to skin it.

My mother would cook the rabbit meat instead of meat balls in the spaghetti tomato sauce. My father used a 16- gauge double barreled Ithaca shotgun to shoot the rabbit, so when eating the rabbit, I would find an occasional bead or pellet from a shotgun shell in the rabbit meat. Ugh!

I even raised a turkey – what’s that? Pet rabbit as a teenager and gave it to a farmer friend. No way would I eat it. It was like a member of our family.

Finally, several years ago, while photographing work horses in nearby Amish farm country New Wilmington, Pa., I almost ran over a flock of wild turkeys in the roadway. They were smart enough to get out of the way. They were not so dumb turkeys. You might say, turkeys, turkeys everywhere and not a bite to eat.

Michael J. Lacivita is a Youngstown retiree and member of the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame and the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame.