Thanksgiving in Beloved

Cousins,
Thanksgiving is a pretty exciting day around my hometown of Beloved, Kentucky.

There is always the famous Thanksgiving Day Parade through the streets of town in which I play Santa and ride in my little red wagon.  I have welded eight little hamster wheels to the pull handle.  I have my eight hand-trained squirrels; named Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixon, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Fluffy, runnin’ as hard as they can in the wheels to pull me along.  They each have their little antlers on that Oh My Darlin’ made from pipe cleaners.  I have a fishin’ pole I hold out in front of them with a walnut on the end of the string.  By movin’ the fishin’ pole I can change directions and go any which way with them little furry fellers.  Only problem I have is the back side of my Santa suit drags in the street an’ when it is snowy or rainin’ it looks like Santa is incontinent.

The excitin’ part is the new addition this year to the Parade an’ all the goin’s on.

You may remember a couple of years ago my Cousin Peanut stirred things up right smart by pumpin’ his scrawny jake turkey full of moonshine.  That there turkey went into orbit an’ became a fine meal of the Americans on that Russian Space Station.  Them astronauts didn’t like the borscht much.  Them there Russians suggested it would go good with fried turkey.  Made folks a little windy…an’ y’all don’t even want to imagine a bunch of windy astronauts an’ cosmonauts in a small space station!

Well anyways, the Thanksgiving Day Parade steerin’ committee decided Cousin Peanut got so much attention from his jet-powered turkey that they made it part of the festivities.  This year is out first ever jet turkey races.

The rules are simple.  Dobson’s General Store bought 50 frozen turkeys all exactly the same size – 11 pounds 4 ounces.  Cousin Peanut’s Daddy, Vergie Chappell came out of retirement to make one batch of turkey jet fuel, that is his world famous moonshine.  Folks agreed that his moonshine was better than even the stuff Cousin Peanut used in his bird.

Each contestant bought a bird at Dobson’s an’ received exactly one quart of Vergie’s finest.  The birds were thawed an’ each was injected at exactly 6:00 am this morning’ with one quart of moonshine right in the tail area.  The folks were allowed to decorate their turkey any way they wanted, but were not allowed to put anything other than a small American Flag on a stick on each wing to provide lift – just like Cousin Peanut’s bird ended up with as it flew through the leftover 4th of July decorations at the very first jet turkey fly.

At daylight the contest began an’ it was like somethin’ out of the movies.  The fireworks over the state capitol of Frankfort couldn’t have been more amazin’.  Good thing each bird was limited to one quart.  We’d of never been able to judge the winner if they went any further.  As it was, each bird was fitted with trackin’ devices that fellers usually put on their coon dogs when they go into the woods.  Coon dogs is known to run off, so radio collars were developed so’s fellers could find them.

Each bird’s trackin’ collar was turned on just after the “beauty contest”.  Amy Snoddy won that part of the contest with her turkey dressed up as Dolly Parton.  I don’t know how she figured out a way to lift and separate that there turkey breast, but it weren’t too aerodynamic an’ it crashed an’ burned first thing off the launch pad.  Too top heavy, I reckon.

One by one the contestants lit the tail of their turkey.  The moonshine would sizzle for a second before it took off, then, Nellie hold the door!!!  Them turkeys, with their wings spread an’ American Flags flyin’ from each wing tip took off like a moonshiner bein’ chased by the Revenuers from Hades themselves.  It were a glorious sight as the sun came up like a big ol red ball over the hills of Appalachia.  One by one they lit up their tails an’ flew like the wind.

Folks got out of the way real fast as they took off.  It wasn’t long before they was out of sight.  ‘Course, they was the accidents an’ all.  I mentioned the Dolly Parton turkey that was too top heavy.  It hit the street an’ just skittered aroun’ for near a half an hour till it ran out of moonshine.  They was one that Sister Hazel Nutt Budder had mistakenly stuffed with oyster dressin’. They didn’t know an’ it couldn’t be helped.  That turkey exploded in midair.  Folks was covered by four pounds of the best oyster dressin…complete with three quarts of oysters that Sister Hazel had shipped in all the way from Cincinnati, Ohio.  That was a mess, I’ll tell you what.

I won’t even go into detail ‘bout the one that Homer Hiney entered. He thought that if he widened the tail a little by flattenin’ it out, the moonshine might burn slower an’ the flight might be longer.  When he flattened it, he didn’t realize he was messin’ with a natural jet aperture.  All his ol turkey did was sit on the startin’ line sizzlin’ an’ makin’ sounds like that of a flatulent astronaut after havin’ too much borscht.

Well, they are trackin’ the turkeys right now with a homemade radar device.  So far forty-three turkeys are still in the contest an’ they have passed from Clay County air space an’ the control tower at the Corbin, Kentucky airport has given them clearance to continue on across the Cumberland Gap an’ into the Tazwell, Tennessee area.

It’s goin’ to be a great day in the history of my hometown of Beloved, Kentucky.