Big Mike: That Thanksgiving Glow

November 24th, 2009

One Thanksgiving I found myself in possession of a goose. Don’t ask me how. I don’t recall actually going to the store with the intention of buying a goose. I wouldn’t even know how to select one. All I know is, I had a goose.

My now ex-wife Beth and I had been invited to our friends Danny and Sophia’s place for Thanksgiving that year. When they learned I had a goose, they became as giddy as kids on the last day of school. What a memorable Thanksgiving this would be, we all told each other. We’re gonna have a goose.

All of us had been born and raised in the big city (Beth in Milwaukee and the rest of us, of course, in Chicago) so none of us had ever had a goose. Big city people eat chickens, capons, cornish hens and the occasional duck at a Chinese restaurant. And turkey at Thanksgiving.

Had we been pushed on the subject, we’d have ventured that the only people who ate goose lived in log cabins and had Sears catalogues in the outhouse. But we were adventurous sorts so we were eager to flout urban tradition. No turkey for us avant-gardists — we had a goose!

Danny and Sophia had just moved into their new house on the west end of Evanston. The night before, Sophia called me up with the bad news that their new gas oven hadn’t been connected yet. Sophia mumbled something about the gas company finding unsafe couplings but quickly added after hearing me gasp that they weren’t in any imminent danger, that the block wouldn’t disappear in a mushroom cloud.

“So should we come over to your house?” Sophia suggested.

“No, it’s too cramped here,” I replied. Besides the four of us, we’d have Beth’s father, Art, with us. He’d just lost his wife in a car wreck the previous April and Beth didn’t want him spending his first holiday without her alone. (By the way, Art was of that Great Depression/World War II generation of men who’d have sacrificed a limb rather than reveal any emotion. I have no memory of him shedding a tear or otherwise bemoaning the loss of his wife, although in the days after the accident he repeatedly shook his head sadly and said, “That was a good car. It had a good motor. It’s too bad.”)

“Let’s grill the goose!” I said and Sophia hailed the idea as if I’d just articulated a plan to wipe out world hunger.

The next afternoon, Danny wheeled out their enormous Weber kettle from the garage and parked it next to the back door. I loaded it up with charcoal, figuring it would take a good four or five hours to grill a nice juicy goose. I sprayed so much lighter fluid on the pile that I started getting high on the fumes. I tossed a match on it and, when the flames began to dance higher than the treetops, brought out the fully stuffed goose.

For the first couple of hours I lifted the Weber’s lid constantly, wondering why the goose remained a sickly white-pink.

“Don’t open the grill so much,” Sophia warned me. “Every time you do that you lose heat.”

It turned dark out. Art asked when we were going to eat. Already on the far side of 80, he’d become used to eating dinner at the time normal people were thinking about a late lunch. Soon, I replied, soon — although I’d sneaked a peek a few minutes before and had found that only the bird’s wingtips had begun to darken. So I dashed outside again and opened the Weber’s vents fully, hoping to hot those coals up to the max.

I rejoined the group back in the living room where “It’s A Wonderful Life” was on TV. By the time Jimmy Stewart was about to jump off the bridge, at least two of us were snoring. Finally, when the townspeople brought bushels-full of cash to Stewart’s house, I snapped out of my own coma and managed to hoist myself off the sofa so I could check on the goose.

I stepped out on the enclosed back porch and was hit by a wave of fatty, smoky goose aroma. Ah, I thought, she’s gotta be going good be now.

Outside, the entire backyard was filled with dense smoke. Yee-ow, I thought, she’s gotta be done by now.

I lifted the Weber’s lid and was nearly blinded by a roaring inferno. From what I could see through the flames, the goose was glowing red. The entire fowl had shrunk to about a third its original size. The stuffing that had previously been overflowing out its cavity was now withered. Things didn’t look good.

I only had a large serving fork with me so I grabbed a strong-enough looking twig from the ground and wrestled with the scorched bird. Finally, I had it balanced with my two tools and lifted it off the grate. Now what the hell was I going to do with it? The oil sac on its butt still was on fire so I did the only thing I could — I put the goose on the flagstones and started beating it with my twig. My efforts were insufficient as the grease fired up even more in the open air. “Help!” I called — but not too loudly since I wasn’t terribly interested in alerting Danny and Sophia’s neighbors to my plight.

I called for help a half dozen more times before the goose’s oil sac finally burned itself out. Right about that time Sophia popped her head out the porch door and asked, “Mike, do you hear somebody calling for help?”

“Naw,” I said. Sophia’s eyes grew wide when she spied the charred carcass on the ground.

We cleaned the goose off and carved away as much of the blackened ruins as possible. We were left with about a forkful of edible fowl for each person. We filled ourselves up on mashed potatoes and green bean casserole.

“I am so sorry you guys,” I said when we were finished. Oh no, everybody lied, it was fine. A half hour later, I caught Danny sneaking a peanut butter sandwich.

We were right about one thing: it was a memorable Thanksgiving.