For the holiday, I thought I would post some of my early work. I’m still proud of this story, which includes action, suspense, irony, pathos, and a powerful message of animal liberation. (I also notice that my prose style hasn't changed much since it was written.) Below is an original manuscript page, along with the complete, newly annotated, text:
;)
Page one, original manuscript of "The Lone Turkey" (Tim Ellis Archives).
The Lone Turkey
by Tim Ellis
Hi! I’m a turkey. My name is Englebert.1 My parents named me that for some reason. Actually, I’d rather have a name something like Bob or Joe. It would be a lot easier.
Another Thanksgiving is coming up. You know what that means, don’t you? Us turkeys get killed, plucked, cleaned, stuffed, roasted, and eaten. It’s altogether very cruel. I agree in giving thanks, but there has to be a better way to do it.
Well this year (1980) is going to be different. No turkeys are going to get gobbled up (at least around this part of the country). I’ll bet your wondering what a turkey like me can do about it. Well, it goes like this:2
Last year it was so sad seeing those turkeys die. Some of them were even close to my friend Frank and I. Frank’s parents were some of the first ones to go. We quickly decided to take revenge, but we knew that the only turkeys we could save would be the ones in our own turkey farm in Mississippi.3
One day Frank peeked in the window of the owner of the turkey farm’s office. There was a T.V. on and he was watching “The Lone Ranger.”4 Frank thought that we could dress up as the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Well, that’s just what we did, I was the Lone Ranger, Frank was Tonto. We also changed our names to the Lone Turkey and Squanto.5
On Thanksgiving Eve we put on our costumes. Mine was a mask (a piece of cloth with holes in it) that a mother turkey had made for us out of a piece of cloth from her nest. Frank’s costume was some turkey feathers made into an Indian headdress.6
We snuck into the chamber where the axes were kept.7 We carried the axes to the hayloft and buried them in the hay. We thought that the men would never find them there. We were wrong. The men searched every where and found them. We heard them saying, “Who’s the scoundrel who hid my axe?”8
Meanwhile, the turkeys were in an uproar. We had failed, so we knew that we had to do something to save the turkeys.
At the last resort, I pecked at the fence of the turkey farm with all my might. The fence fell down and Squanto guided the excited turkeys out of the newly made door.9
The last one out asked Squanto, “Who was that masked bird?”
My partner replied, “That was the Lone Turkey!”
That is why this turkey farm made no profit that year,10 and why the people of Mississippi ate peanut butter and jelly for Thanksgiving dinner.
__________
1. The name Englebert does not appear again in the text.
2. The folksy narrative voice has been compared to that of Huckleberry Finn.
3. Here, Englebert regrets not being able to save all turkeys, everywhere. Critics have often noted the messianic complex of this “Holden Caulfield with feathers.”
4. The original Lone Ranger television series went off the air in 1957. The turkey farm owner could have been watching a re-run, or else it was the animated Tarzan/Lone Ranger Adventure Hour (1980-82). The author might also have been inspired by a routine from his parents’ Bill Cosby album.
5. There is no known reason for the name Squanto -- except that it sounded cool.
6. Political correctness did not exist at this time.
7. The primary means of slaughtering poultry in Mississippi in the 1980s was by axe. Axes were kept in chambers.
8. It is accurate that turkey farm/slaughterhouse employees would have spoken like the villains in Scooby Doo.
9. Note the parallels to Exodus.
10. This story helped to inspire more sustainable models of agriculture in America.