The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-11-26
This is Turkey day.

This is Turkey day.
The official name of the official fowl
for this delectable occasion is MeIeagris
gallopavo.
Today, when carving, do not say,
''Will you have a wish bone?" but COM
placently remark:
May serve you with a segmant Of
the sternum, extending along the mid
die line of the cervical region of the an
terror part of the trunk of this
Maleagris gallopavo?'
Although in it's wild and native state,
the turkey is a strictly home product,
born and bred exclusively in America,
the finished. or tame. product, such as
are served on the dinner tables of to-
day are of foreign extraction. The an
cestors of the common, or garden
variety, came from Mexico.
Our illustrious Puritan ancestors
showed excellent discrimination when
they annexed as an integral portion OF
Thanksgiving day the turkey habit.
Though established originally as an
element of economy, for wild turkeys
were the cheapest sort of available
meat, the turkey habit has survived
the advancing years and advancing
prices, and to this day stands out pre-
dominant as the inseparable feature of
Thanksgiving. AS Santa Claus is the
patron saint of December 25, so the
turkey is the patron bird of the last
Thursday in November.
Today in Topeka some $500 tur-
KEYS will go the way prescribed by
our ancestors for theirs. Whether
you eat in a hotel or a restaurant, in
a cherries hut, or at good old fash
ioned gathering, whether you
grumble or not that it costs % cents
a pound, still the turkey must be
present to make the occasion COM
plete.
In order to murmur thanks. just
look at this. A cargo consisting of
having been shipped from New York
to London and returned, has been
bought by the New York commission
houses at 81 cents and will be sold
to New Workers at between 80 and 40
cents. Practically the whole of the
local supply was shipped into Topeka
this week alive, and sell at % cents
dressed.
Notwithstanding the comparatively
short turkey crop in Kansas occas-
ioned by excessive rains last April,
and the high price, there has never
been larger sale of the Thanksgiving
birds than this season. Did you ever
stop to think, while eating your por-
ton of that noble fowl, of how he
looked running at large or where he
came from. All over this country
the farmers once raised the bird as
an adjunct to his yearly produce. But
it is an arduouS task, for the birds
are extremely peevish when young,
art apt to wonder far and fail to re-
turn In eastern Kansas farmers
drive automobiles, and buy turkeys,
while their wives have other things to
do than shoe hens. But out west
where it is a harder struggle to gain
a livelihood from the soil the farmers
wives take up the turkey method of
helping their husbands tide over the
years between crops. 1t is thus in
western Oklahoma and Texas, along
the frontier, where men are per
sistently and slowly claiming the
drouthy lands for agriculture. The
fact that it is SO much trouble to
raise them always keeps them at a
good price. Besides, the cloud of
grasshoppers that destroy the crops is
the best fattening food a turkey can
find.
The Solomon valley, once famous for
it's large shipments of turkeys, has