
The Turkey Wars
It’s happening again, that multi-million dollar grocery chain has declared war. I don’t know why the government doesn’t put a stop to it. After all, there’s no taxes on a turkey. As you might imagine, Aunt Lizzie is in a fighting mood. By now she is a seasoned veteran, having already been through the Ham Wars there last spring. Not to mention a few minor skirmishes with the 10kg all-purpose flour and the not-soon-forgotten “dollar a can” evaporated milk campaign. Come to think of it, that was the only argument poor Fred ever won over her in their fifty-plus years of marriage. Yes my son, ol Fred put the food down on that one alright. After he had filled the trunk of the car with case after case of tin milk and more in the backseat he finally told Lizzie that was enough. After all, he said if they broke a strut or two getting down the shore with the bumper scraping the pavement she’d have to go halves on the replacement cost. Aunt Lizzie, after making a quick mental note of how many Bingo games she would have to forfeit to do that, gave in.
I know what you’re thinking, there he goes again making fun of old people. Well let me tell you, I’m not. Sure I’m over seventy myself. But the specials don’t bother me so much cause I live alone since the missus passed away almost ten years ago. Now, what’s a fella living by hisself going to do with a turkey or a ham? Not to mention a car-load of tin milk. And just in case you think I’m picking on poor Aunt Lizzie, that’s not true. Sure Mavis up the bay and her man got a pickup truck. You don’t want to get in her way around them turkeys. Then there’s Mary down the harbour, she pretends she’s blind, barrels through the crowd wearing those dark glasses like a freight train. It’s not just the old people, the younger ones are just as bad if not worse.
I forgot to warn you about the time warp that’s somewhere in that store, that’s why us seniors carry hairspray when we go there. Ok, so what if old Mary was the one who told us about using the hairspray, she saw it in a movie on television. Old people like us can’t afford to lose nine months off our time here on Earth and for sure and certain the women don’t want to miss all them Bingo games. There you go again, thinking I’m some kind of crazy old fool. Well, I’m going to straighten you out on that real quick. During the last Turkey War I was looking the fruit and vegetables just as you come in the store wondering who in the name of god could afford to buy any of that stuff when these three young women came in one after the other.
Now, they was all young women in their mid- to late twenties, different sizes and shapes, but non were in the late stages of pregnancy. I should admit here that growing up around here in my time most young people never knew much about the birds and bees. Our parents didn’t talk about that stuff and the teachers at school weren’t allowd. The only thing I knew about birds and bees was they both had wings and could fly. Sure we were convinced babies came from the cabbage garden.
So, to get back to my story about the time warp. About twenty minutes later by my watch, the same young women looked like they were about to deliver. Now go figure that if you can. There was a big commotion out in the parking lot when one of the young women collapsed going to here car. The ambulance was called and someone said it was caused by hypothermia. The policeman who showed up said it was a case of shoplifting. Don’t know where he went to Med school. None of them young women looked to me like they could life a ten pound bag of potatoes, let alone a shop.
In the meantime, Aunt Lizzie, who was once again armed to the teeth with her walker in front of her and the cane in her left hand, which again had that violent twitch in it. Thankfully, there were no unsuspecting visitors from the mainland. So she and Fred got away with their eight or ten huge turkeys and yes, the sign said “two to a customer.” They had the car loaded and were on their way down the shore in less than two hours. Good thing, too, because it was Thursday, Fred’s only night out with the boys and the Legion and of course Aunt Lizzie was going to Bingo – minus her cane and walker. She couldn’t resist telling Fred not to be wasting his money on beer, which he always thought was strange being this was her fourth night at Bingo so far this week.
I heard a couple of days later that Mavis and her man got pulled over by that same policeman. It seems halfway home, the police car came upon them and signaled for them to pull over. The officer gave Mavis’s man a ticket because he pointed out that the law required a loose load in the back of a truck should be covered or tied down. After all, if one of those frozen turkeys was to fly out of the pickup and strike an oncoming vehicle, someone could get seriously injured or killed. The officer wrote out a second ticket when Mavis, not too ladylike, tried to point out to him frozen turkeys can’t fly, and furthermore, while poking him in the chest with her index finger leaving a hole in his bulletproof vest, she wasn’t even sure if live turkeys could fly. She was lucky he didn’t arrest her for assaulting a police officer.
Meanwhile, Old Mary took one look at the situation through her dark glasses and decided to call in reinforcements. Her oldest son and grandson both own Alberta pickups. The whole thing was most likely planned down to the tiniest detail two nights before in the War Room – more commonly known as the back porch of Mary’s house. A couple of hours later, while all the commotion was going on in the parking lot with the young lady who collapsed, no one noticed the convoy of two Alberta pickups and the mini car between them that left the parking lot and proceeded down the harbour. Old Mary always rides between the two pickups, but she’ll drive under the lead vehicle and her grandson will close the gap if there’s any sign of a drone attack.
Cyril Griffin
New Perlican, NL
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