47 Thanksgiving Turkeys

    The first was in Schaghticoke, in a Main Street apartment.  His 46 successors roasted in Valley Falls, in two different ovens.  The smallest was about 19 lbs, the largest almost 23, and this year's just under 22 lbs., a weight which fits comfortably (from the non-turkey viewpoint anyway) into the larger of 2 blue granite roasting pans.  I don't remember why I have 2; probably both were gifts.  Ma may have given me hers when I started cooking the Thanksgiving turkey for her house, but I seem to recall she had a big old stainless steel roasting pan.  Dave could have brought home the larger pan after we'd had some difficulty squeezing an early bird into the smaller pan.  It used to be a concerted effort for us to get the bird into the oven, but no longer.  I have found it easier to work alone, though I need help the night before when someone else has to hold down the handles of the lifter cooking rack, a wonderful convenience which Dorothy gave me some years ago. 
    The turkey went into the oven at 6:44 this morning, 21.8 lbs of fresh Premium Butterball Young Tom Turkey, raised without hormones and with no artificial ingredients.  According to my old Better Homes cookbook, it will be done in about 6 hours, but the Butterball enclosure says 4 and 1/2.  I usually opt for the longer time ,out of guilt, because I always stuff the bird, though all the advice-givers say not to.  As far as I know, no one has ever got sick from the stuffed turkeys I have cooked; I hope this year is the same. 
    I just read the headline of a post where some football personage is planning to serve tofu or something to his family because of what his children had seen on TV.  Yeah, maybe.  It's better not to think about some things too much.  I just saw a re-run of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs," where he artificially inseminated turkeys and he made the same vow.  No more turkey for him, he said.  When my first two kids were tots, and television shows significant to them, they watched some show about a turkey and his harrowing escape from his Thanksgiving destiny.  A cartoon, I recall, but realistically done.  They both started crying, and pleaded that for Thanksgiving that year, we get a turkey "that was already dead."  And so we did.