Memoirs of a Geezer!
Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth
to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!
This Episode: An Homage to the Torkey and Its Feast Day!... And "Louies"!
Many rotations of the earth round the sun have passed in this geezer's time on the planet, and many fourth Thursdays in November. Not as many as some, but truly, a lot of them!! The one just past, for reasons unrevealed, gave rise to memory and a feast perhaps worth recalling, mainly for its extreme oddities and silliness among the annals of Torkeys come and gone.
As too many of us have come to realize, and perhaps dread, that particular feast day is or can be a danger to the human condition, to the digestive tract, the intestines, one's girth. As young marrieds, SweetHeart and I were committed to two enormous dinners. To miss one family's output of stuffed bird and cranberry sauce and squash and brussel sprouts and bread and ten different desserts including pumpkin pie that I'd don't much care for... would have resulted in excommunication from the offended family or shunning or perhaps some form of torture, maybe even death!!
One can only imagine the suffering, for example, of Torkey celebrants from divorced circumstances. Dinner with two sets of mothers and fathers, possibly four, other family members, aunties and uncles and grandparents still on friendly terms... exponential Torkey dinners until the diners explode in a great cataclysm of stuffing and partially digested torkey and squash and brussel sprouts and jellied, possibly homemade, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie that nobody really liked...
Anyway, on one of those fabled feast days, SweetHeart and I -- prior to solidifying our highly intelligent decision to alternate families -- made off to California, Manhattan Beach to be precise, to sup with a group of west coast chums. We anticipated a small table of intimates, but found ourselves at one end of an enormous expanse on which you could have parked a '57 Buick, and quite possibly its garage!
The whole affair began with a kind of psuedo-elegant decorum, all of the diners behaving themselves admirably. And then something happened. The dinner being a potluck format, everyone contributing a dish, the host presented and then placed upon the table an enormous yam thing covered in chopped nuts. It looked almost obscene. Every family seems to have a euphemism for human excrement. Ours was and still in "Pooders." The giant yam quickly became christened, "The Colossal Person-Eating Yam Pooder Possibly from a Planet of Potato-Shaped Vegetarians"!
No one would claim ownership of the Yam Pooder. It became an object of great mirth and derision. It seemed to overtake and invade the celebrants, like a great body-snatching giant Yam Pooder apparition!! Having entered our collective psyche like a demon zombie suffused with laughing gas, it seemed to precipitate an enormous food fight. Particles of Yam Pooder went flying about the great table, landing in eyes and on noses, in hair and ears!! Stuffing then went careening throughout the room. Diners seemed to grow hideous warts, pustules and boils created entirely of cascading Yam Pooder particulates, Stuffing, mashed potato globules and squash projectiles!! Great Gobbles!, what a scene it was!! The hitherto decorum descending into a madness of chaos and bedlam!
SweetHeart, having witnessed a Yam Pooder particulate "growing" in one of my ears -- and
having long wanted to have me entered somehow into the Guinness Book of World Records -- had an epiphany, an inspiration. "We must have an exciting assortment of 'Louies' placed into Joel's left ear, maybe the right as well, should the left become completely engorged. It'll be a Guinness sensation"!! (For those who may be uninitiated, a "Louie" is something, including a wet finger, inserted into the hapless recipient's ear!) The celebrants went wild with enthusiastic agreement!
"Do it!," they shouted as if with one great voice of approval! "Do it now!!"
SweetHeart began with a portion of Yam Pooder, inserting a healthy clump of it into my ear. It was following by stuffing, mashed potato with peas, a bit of turkey, squash, balled up doughy bread... My ear and head were glutted with food particulates. I could not longer hear the ensuing laughter and joyous screams of, "More! More!"
When it was over, when I had excavated the "Louies" and finally regained hearing in my left ear, then the right, I noted that the uncontrolled hoots of laugbter and delight had not subsided. It was a most memorable occasion, one that the attending diners probably still talk about when supping, napkins tucked into their shirt or blouse collars, hoping dignity will prevail at the dining tables of their personal and separate geezerhoods!
Just in case I never did so during that long-past Torkey extravaganza, I extend warm and sincere thanks to primary hosts, Michael and Suzy, both of whom would probably sooner forget the experience than re-live it!! Nevertheless, my memory is most fond and my gratitude, however ridiculously belated, is truly genuine. By the by, this year's -- the 2017 Torkey Celebration -- was relatively calm, requiring no food-removing bathing or scraping of edible pustules and particulates from head and body parts!! But, one never knows... wait'll next year!!
(Special Note of Gratitude and Dedication: The perpetrator devotes this writing to SweetHeart, Michael, Suzy, Tom, the Knutsens maybe, Carl and all of the other celebrants who populated the enormous Torkey Day table of our youth, that took place sometime in the distant past in Manhattan Beach, California!)
Many rotations of the earth round the sun have passed in this geezer's time on the planet, and many fourth Thursdays in November. Not as many as some, but truly, a lot of them!! The one just past, for reasons unrevealed, gave rise to memory and a feast perhaps worth recalling, mainly for its extreme oddities and silliness among the annals of Torkeys come and gone.
As too many of us have come to realize, and perhaps dread, that particular feast day is or can be a danger to the human condition, to the digestive tract, the intestines, one's girth. As young marrieds, SweetHeart and I were committed to two enormous dinners. To miss one family's output of stuffed bird and cranberry sauce and squash and brussel sprouts and bread and ten different desserts including pumpkin pie that I'd don't much care for... would have resulted in excommunication from the offended family or shunning or perhaps some form of torture, maybe even death!!
One can only imagine the suffering, for example, of Torkey celebrants from divorced circumstances. Dinner with two sets of mothers and fathers, possibly four, other family members, aunties and uncles and grandparents still on friendly terms... exponential Torkey dinners until the diners explode in a great cataclysm of stuffing and partially digested torkey and squash and brussel sprouts and jellied, possibly homemade, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie that nobody really liked...
 |
| Not the exact Giant Nut-Encrusted Yam Pooder, but a Close Proximity! |
The whole affair began with a kind of psuedo-elegant decorum, all of the diners behaving themselves admirably. And then something happened. The dinner being a potluck format, everyone contributing a dish, the host presented and then placed upon the table an enormous yam thing covered in chopped nuts. It looked almost obscene. Every family seems to have a euphemism for human excrement. Ours was and still in "Pooders." The giant yam quickly became christened, "The Colossal Person-Eating Yam Pooder Possibly from a Planet of Potato-Shaped Vegetarians"!
No one would claim ownership of the Yam Pooder. It became an object of great mirth and derision. It seemed to overtake and invade the celebrants, like a great body-snatching giant Yam Pooder apparition!! Having entered our collective psyche like a demon zombie suffused with laughing gas, it seemed to precipitate an enormous food fight. Particles of Yam Pooder went flying about the great table, landing in eyes and on noses, in hair and ears!! Stuffing then went careening throughout the room. Diners seemed to grow hideous warts, pustules and boils created entirely of cascading Yam Pooder particulates, Stuffing, mashed potato globules and squash projectiles!! Great Gobbles!, what a scene it was!! The hitherto decorum descending into a madness of chaos and bedlam!
SweetHeart, having witnessed a Yam Pooder particulate "growing" in one of my ears -- and
 |
| Above is a stylized image of the offended Left Ear... A modern depiction sans "Louies"! |
"Do it!," they shouted as if with one great voice of approval! "Do it now!!"
SweetHeart began with a portion of Yam Pooder, inserting a healthy clump of it into my ear. It was following by stuffing, mashed potato with peas, a bit of turkey, squash, balled up doughy bread... My ear and head were glutted with food particulates. I could not longer hear the ensuing laughter and joyous screams of, "More! More!"
When it was over, when I had excavated the "Louies" and finally regained hearing in my left ear, then the right, I noted that the uncontrolled hoots of laugbter and delight had not subsided. It was a most memorable occasion, one that the attending diners probably still talk about when supping, napkins tucked into their shirt or blouse collars, hoping dignity will prevail at the dining tables of their personal and separate geezerhoods!
Just in case I never did so during that long-past Torkey extravaganza, I extend warm and sincere thanks to primary hosts, Michael and Suzy, both of whom would probably sooner forget the experience than re-live it!! Nevertheless, my memory is most fond and my gratitude, however ridiculously belated, is truly genuine. By the by, this year's -- the 2017 Torkey Celebration -- was relatively calm, requiring no food-removing bathing or scraping of edible pustules and particulates from head and body parts!! But, one never knows... wait'll next year!!
(Special Note of Gratitude and Dedication: The perpetrator devotes this writing to SweetHeart, Michael, Suzy, Tom, the Knutsens maybe, Carl and all of the other celebrants who populated the enormous Torkey Day table of our youth, that took place sometime in the distant past in Manhattan Beach, California!)
Humbly Submitted, 12-16-17 -- Joel K.
