Miscalculation prompts desperate turkey trot

As the morning frost slowly cleared from my pickup truck windshield at 6:03 a.m., Nov. 24, I noticed my brother standing by the side of my street when I pulled up to the stop sign.

John lives nearby and was on his way to work. He had stopped his car to ask where I was going so early.

I was on a quest, I told him. A few days earlier, my girlfriend, Moira, and I realized we had misjudged how long it would take to defrost the Thanksgiving turkey in the refrigerator. We started too soon.

I told John about my bird problem. 

"Peanut butter would be fine,” he said, not concerned about the loss of the holiday dinner table centerpiece for the meal he and his family would attend.

But it was time for me to head out on darkened country roads in search of a turkey. 

How hard could it be to find a frozen turkey the week of Thanksgiving?

Very hard, I found out.

The freezer sections of supermarkets I checked over the weekend had empty spaces where piles of frozen turkeys had nested on earlier days.

I had a tip that a flock of frozen fowl would be landing overnight at Redner’s Fresh Market near Lewes, so Monday morning I was trying to get there as soon as I could after the store opened at 6 a.m.

When my truck rolled to a stop in a space in the nearly empty parking lot, I saw a woman walking out of the store with a frozen turkey hanging from its netting encasement.

That better not be the last one, I thought for a moment, avoiding my past rugby instincts to tackle her in the parking lot.

That idea brought back memories of holidays past, when Black Friday was an experience that would make Darwin blush as you fought a stranger for a popular Christmas toy.

That all ended when big retailers stopped relying on early doorbuster sales – after some store doors were literally busted and customers trampled – and online shopping emerged.

But on this quiet morning, I walked into Redner’s, hoping I was not too late.

I asked a meat department employee where I could find the turkeys that were free to customers who had already spent more than $400 at the supermarket chain since November 2024.

He showed me a display case with the last 10 turkeys eligible for the deal.

I checked each tag until I found the largest, weighing 14.34 pounds. It was a little light for my assigned target of 15 to 16 pounds, but it would have to do.

Walking up to a cash register with my girlfriend’s mother’s keys and her Redner’s discount card, I was ready to explain that my name really was Janet. Luckily, the clerk did not ask.

When I checked out, it was a victory not only for me, but all of the wild turkeys at Cape Henlopen State Park. They will never know how close one of them came to being covered in gravy on my plate next to stuffing and vegetables on Thanksgiving Day.

Triumphantly driving my pickup home as the brilliant dawn colors rose from the nearby Atlantic Ocean, I was confident this was how the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people felt in 1621 as they prepared for that first Thanksgiving in Plymouth.

And I, too, thanked God for his abundance, especially free supermarket turkeys.