Turkey

Love Divine All Loves Excelling

Hi friend,

I’m going to dip into nostalgia this week and share the opening few paragraphs of my admissions essay to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry Program. The essay had a minimum word count so it got a little tedious and self-indulgent as it went along, but I still like these opening paragraphs, so I’m going to share them with you. They’re about turkeys. Gobble gobble gobble.

I grew up in the turkey capital of the world.

Where, in the course of history, other cities built sophisticated gates, engraved archways, and giant green torch bearing ladies of liberty to mark their town’s entry, my hometown built bronze statues of turkeys—two of them, one at each end of the main north-south throughway. The local baseball team was the Turks (short for Turkeys). The tallest building in town was the eight-story feed distribution building that would occasionally make the entire town smell like dog food. Turkey was to my hometown as Nebuchadnezzer was to Babylon. And all citizens were, in some form, expected to pay homage.

I did not grow up on a farm, but there was a turkey farm next to the neighborhood where I grew up. The turkey house sat just up the hill from our house. On snowy days, the neighborhood kids would occasionally roll under the farmer’s fence and sled past the long white roofed structures. In the heart of winter, nothing stirred and the smell from the turkeys was barely noticeable (at least no more noticeable than in any other corner of the county). Either the farmer didn’t mind us, never saw us, or figured that spring would bring a natural sort of revenge for our trespassing.

The pungent smell of the springtime turkey house cleaning day would stick to my clothes for what felt like weeks. It made contact with my fabrics while I waited for the school bus watching white feathers floating on unseen air currents. I did not blame my friends from other neighborhoods for giving me a wide berth on those mornings. We all understood, it was my offering; it was the Turkey.

Eat Up!

In wordy wordiness,

Walter