For those of you who may have missed it, this post is a tradition, as much as honoring “Coach” JB Leftwich as it is something i cherish. The dog in this story is one of my best friends ever.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING…in trying times.

Last year’s post is below in it’s entirety. i should note i did try my “egg” grill knockoff last year and the results was one of the best smoked turkeys yet.

Wow! i have a tradition.

Actually, i have a bunch of traditions, some of them are closer to superstition, some are just to keep some folks happy, and a few, like this one, are mine, all mine.

The more i think about it, the more i like this tradition. It’s sort of in line with JB Leftwich, the Coach’s tradition. Every year about this time but just a tad later, Coach would write one of his weekly columns for The Lebanon Democrat about a fruit cake recipe. i think it was a fruit cake, and i’m pretty sure it was his mother’s, but i am too lazy to look it up this morning. But i like the idea of following in Coach’s footsteps. It’s hard to go wrong that way.

The below is from last year’s post. i should add i still cling to Mr. Dickel’s version of sour mash even though the Prichard brand with a distillery up in Kelso, Tennessee, must have some family connection. Both Jo Doris and Estelle carried the maiden name of Prichard, and it’s without the “t,” which makes them fairly unique. Someday, someday, i will find the Prichard family connection among the Leftwich’s, the Jewell’s, and  the distillery.

This, i think, is my new tradition.

i wrote this recipe (sic) in 1990. i now am the Turkey Smoking Go-To at the Jewell household whenever we have Thanksgiving here with more than two people (If it’s just Maureen and i we find a very nice restaurant usually without a turkey dinner).

i have published this a couple of times in The Democrat and posted it here several times. There is a more serious version with more exact directions, but i forget where it is every year and wing it. i was going to blow off putting it out in the newspaper or on the web this year, when Bill Goodner described how he smoked his turkey, i remembered turkey smoking being a JB Leftwich family Thanksgiving or Christmas tradition for Jim and Jack to smoke a turkey while tending to it with a Prichard whiskey in  hand (it used to be George Dickel, and i still stick to the Tullahoma brand). My brother-in-law Daniel Boggs and my nephew Bill Boase, pride themselves on technically correct smoking.

Well, i ain’t technical. i use an old Weber smoker, not as good as my smaller original like Jimmy Lynch used back when, but my smaller one rusted out about twenty years ago and you just can’t find them anymore. So now i add charcoal and chips throughout the process.

A couple of months ago, we got a new Komodo dragon grill…just kidding: it’s  a knock off of a “Big Green Egg” smoker Char-Griller dubbed the “King Griller Akorn Kamado Kooker” (“kamado” is the term used for a Japanese smoker, which looks like an egg). Therefore, i could become more technical. But i am a sentimentalist, and getting up in the wee hours of the morning to start the coals, top them with the soaked hickory chips (i tried mesquite chips once, but i’m from Tennessee: hickory chips are the only chips), put the turkey on the grill, pour the marinade from the bucket over the turkey and into the drip/water pan, and then tending to the fire and chips randomly and very carefully throughout the day gives me a sense of fulfillment.

i am learning the awesome powers of my Komodo dragon knockoff grill and have found grilling steaks, pork chops, etc. is great, and i plan to to expand to seafood, fish, and Cornish game hens in the near future, but i think i’ll stick to my old smoker for the turkey.

So Bill, i don’t think i can be of much help on electric smokers, but it i thought you might like this recipe. This year, there is no dog. When i put Lena, my last one down, i vowed not to have another dog until i was sure it would outlive me and put me down rather than vice versa. i still want to have a dog again, but not for helping me smoke a turkey.

Dec 10, 1990, 10:36 pm

SAN DIEGO—Holidays, except for the weather, are pretty much the same for me out here in the southwest corner or back in Tennessee. To start, no one will let me smoke the turkey.

When I was growing up in Lebanon, and every time I return there for a holiday, my mother cooks the turkey. When there are only a few of us there, she makes a chicken taste like a turkey. She roasts the turkey, or the chicken, in the oven, and it comes complete with dressing and gravy. When we have a holiday out here, my wife cooks the turkey the same way my mother cooks the turkey. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, I volunteer to cook the turkey. Every year, whether in Tennessee or out here in the Southwest corner, whoever is in charge of turkeys says no. They profess to love the turkey the way I fix it, but they say another time would be better. They say they want a traditional turkey.

I picked up turkey cooking while I was spending some considerable time about two-thirds of the way between here in the southwest corner and Tennessee. The Colonel, grandfather of my oldest daughter, lived up in Paris, Texas, and he fed me my first smoked turkey. I loved it. Since then, I have modified his recipe somewhat and do cook one fine smoked turkey. Since I can’t have it out here or in Tennessee, I thought someone with fewer traditionalists in their immediate family might like to have the recipe to try for the holidays.

Smoking a Turkey

INGREDIENTS:

1. This is fairly important to the success of the whole affair. Pick a good one. The critical part is to make sure it will fit in the smoker
2. 1 container large enough to hold the turkey and cover it with the magic elixir. I’ve been known to use a plastic bucket, but sometimes the dog gets upset as we normally use it for his water dish. This is okay as long as we stay out of biting reach of the dog for two or three days.
3. 1 smoker, probably any kind that claims to be a smoker and any number of possible jury rigs would work; however, if I were using a “Weber” or like vessel, I would make sure that there was extra water in the smoker).
4. 1 bottle of beer. Beer in longnecks is preferable but one should not become too concerned about the type of beer as “Lone Star” is a bit too elegant for this type of cooking. Besides, we wouldn’t want to waste a beer worth drinking on some dumb turkey. If one is desperate and doesn’t mind subjecting oneself to abject humiliation, it is permissible to stoop to using a can of beer.
5. 1\2 cup of Madeira. Again, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about the quality of the wine, and in truth, any red wine is probably okay. However, I would stay away from “Night Train” wine as it has been known to eat through barbecue grills, smokers, and anything made of material weaker than that used in hulls of nuclear submarines.
6. Angostura bitters
7. Worcestershire sauce
8. Chili powder
9. Oregano
10. Sage
11. Honey
12. Molasses
13. Undoubtedly, there are numerous items that I have forgotten to list here, but that’s okay as it really depends on what your individual taste is — I don’t suggest substituting low fat milk for the beer, but most everything else is probably okay — and if it’s really important, I’ll realize I left it out when I get to the narrative of how to use all this stuff and include the forgotten ingredient there.

PREPARATION:

Thaw the turkey. Take all those weird things that they put in those plastic packages inside the turkey and cook them in a skillet without the plastic packages, turning them frequently. Then feed what you just cooked to the dog. It might placate him enough to keep him from biting you for taking away his water bucket. If there are traditionalists in the bunch, give the stuff to them rather than the dog and let them make gravy.

Put the turkey in large container. Pour beer and Madeira over turkey. If you have not allowed about 24 hours for the turkey to thaw or about 8-12 hours for marinating the turkey, call your invited guests and advise them that the celebration will be about two days later than indicated on the original invitation.

Sprinkle other ingredients over the turkey. Be plentiful. It’s almost impossible to get too much.

Crunch the garlic cloves I didn’t mention in the ingredients and add to the container. I normally use about four normal sized cloves for a normal sized turkey. Also add the previously omitted bay leaves, about 6-8 for that same normal sized bird.

Add enough water to cover the turkey although it probably wouldn’t be a disaster if a leg partially stuck out. Then put the container in a safe place, unless of course, you want the dog to be rapturously happy and not bite you until long after his teeth have fallen out.

Allow to sit undisturbed for 6-10 hours (longer is better and ten hours is not necessarily the upper limit but exceeding ten hours may have some impact on when you either eat or get tired of the turkey taking up all that safe space).

Put the turkey on smoker grill above water pan after lighting the charcoal (one or two coals burning well is the best condition for the charcoal) and placing soaked hickory chips, which I also forgot to mention, earlier on the charcoal — again, be plentiful — after soaking the chips for at least 30 minutes. Pour remaining magic elixir over the turkey into the water pan. Add as much water to the water pan as possible without overflowing and putting out the fire below. Cover. Do not touch. Do not look. Do not peek…unless it doesn’t start to smoke in about thirty minutes. Then peek. If it’s smoking, leave alone for at least six hours for a large normal sized turkey. It is almost impossible to overcook if you have added enough water at the outset. You should check and add water or charcoal throughout the process. I have found that mesquite charcoal is the best, as it burns hotter. Regular charcoal will do fine but will require more checking.

The secret to the whole process is to cook extremely slow, as slow as possible and still start the fire.

Serve turkey, preferably without the garlic cloves or bay leaves. Now is the time for “Night Train” wine or the good beer. Serve “Night Train” very cold as indicated on the label.

The turkey’s also good cold.

Shoot the dog.

It seems i’m always making excuses to you, and myself as well, about why i’m not posting more. i have five posts in the hopper, one of which is a summary of the others. Book writing, responding to comments on my website, home projects, paying attention to my wife, connecting and reconnecting with friends and family. And of course, there is a lot of golf in there.

For this, i can wait no longer.

The news came a couple of days ago. i’m still dealing with it. It hit me harder than some others. Frank Novick passed away.

It was unexpected, staph infection and sepsis. He suffered for about three weeks. From my perception, Frank was one of the healthier of our group of golfers, primarily old telephone guys. He was one of the nicest guys in the group. He would distribute grapefruits from his tree to the other golfers. Just a caring, nice guy.

Just over a month ago, he noticed the face of my putter was scraped. He gave me one he had just like mine. The last time i saw him, i showed him how i had switched shafts and was putting better. He told me to keep it until he asked for it back, and then he said it was mine. i offered to pay for it and he said if i wanted i should get the trade-in price from Golf Mart and that would be fine.

i still have the twenty bucks in my wallet (the store told me they would give me $14.00). i have committed to using that putter for the rest of my golf playing in honor of Frank.

Before Frank became ill, that golf group lost another. James Clark was fun. He was the treasurer and one of the folks that made San Diego Telco Golf work. James had battled kidney problems for a number of years. He certainly wasn’t a great golfer but he loved to talk about his game, and he was a loyal part of the group. And boy, did he enjoy a good laugh, even if the joke was on himself.

i thought he was doing okay with his illness until that bad news came.

Damn.

There are other friends and family who are gone and many who have serious illnesses and physical ailments. They are in my age group, although most are younger than me. It happens. I am old. My two golfing groups have been around for longer than thirty years and we weren’t spring chickens when i joined them.

As i mulled my sadness at my loss of these golf friends and others, i remembered a poem (sic) i wrote after observing my parents in their mid-90’s one evening:

Waiting Grace

the old folks sit in the too warm room,
television images blink randomly,
the mute button silences the room
although they do not know as the hearing aids
lie on their respective tables with other
paraphernalia required for the elderly;
they sit knowing the time will come soon:
waiting grace.
Noble,
Sad,
All is right with the world.
They and the remaining few of their generation
know how to demonstrate
waiting grace.
No threat, no fret, no fear
shows in their continence:
they do what they can and
what they can decreases perceptively daily,
faculties fade and with the fading,
the joys of their industry escaping slowly:
waiting grace.
They have endured the test of time when
times were harder and
simpler and
they hold to those codes of right and
simplicity and
goodness to the neighbor, friend and
to service:
waiting grace.

i just hope i have the strength, the hope, the patience, and the grace of my mother and father in these coming years.

oh brother, oh brother,

oh brother, oh brother,
what is to become of me?
i find myself a’drifting
on a ship in the black wild sea;
the night is dark,
the wind conflicted,
the seas confused,
like me.

oh brother, oh brother,
do you hear my plea far, far away
from where we used to be?
as the strange calm is brewing
what i suspect is the center of low,
i face the wind on the starboard wing
throwing my right arm back
to find where that center ought to be;
the nefarious wind keeps shifting;
in turn, i spin in fruitless pursuit
of finding the eye’s beginning
when i realize my ship and i
are amidst the eye a’spinning.

oh brother, oh brother,
this is not dire history
similar to Wordworth’s Leonard and James,
yet Time is intertwined with the sea,
beautiful in its calm,
beautiful in its fury,
with Time merged into the deep, dark waters.

oh brother, oh brother,
one of us did not wander
onto the waters of Time,
nor lose his soul in the spume of the waves:
that was me;
you remained on solid ground,
helping others find their souls,
not losing yours.

as Time slips by and never slips at all,
as age grows upon us,
i have returned from the sea,
my ships are scrapped or down,
down, down in the deep;
the winds on the main have calmed;
the seas are rolling gently;
i can see the stars:
they are Time as well;
the heavens sparkle away the dark;
Time is here,
oh brother, oh brother.

There are a lot of things not right with this world right now. It’s been that way pretty much throughout history: a sine wave of good and bad. Right now, it seems we are on the deep end of that curve. Our country keeps missing the fact we are pretty much evenly divided on how we should run this country and each side trying to bully their way into dominance rather than sitting down, conversing, and trying to do what’s right…for all of us.

Sad.

In the meantime, there is a college athletic program that is struggling. The minor sports are doing well but football and basketball are trying to compete in an environment not conducive to the true “student-athlete” concept of college sports.

Yet this school keeps trying. One sport is, according to moi, doing it the way it should be done in all of college athletics. The coach, Tim Corbin, is a model for doing it “the right way, the Vandy Way” as David Williams, a man who lived his own motto to perfection, described perfection.

This afternoon, Larry “Coach” Creekmore sent this link to me along with other brothers from our fraternity days at Vanderbilt . The bunch remains close, mostly through Vanderbilt sports, which more and more revolves around Vandy Boys baseball.

i am trying to put myself back at 13 with all my dreams and not anything near the athletic talent of Dylan Adams but sharing those dreams of being a college athlete. But i never reached that goal, not close. i certainly didn’t have the obstacles Dylan faced in his final days.

So Creekmore was right when he said i needed to pull out the Kleenex. This is a story of the way it should be, sad but positive.  Vandy’s baseball coach keeps proving an athletic program can be successful doing it “The Right Way, the Vandy Way.”

i don’t care what college team in any sport you root for, or even the professional sports teams you choose to follow.  Your team should be motivated to be what Vandy was for this young man and his team, and his community. All coaches, managers, directors, support staff, and the athletes themselves should strive to recognize their impact on so many fans.

Coaching icons were and are wrong when they promote “winning is the only thing.”  Grantland Rice was correct when he wrote “it’s how you play the game.”

i think this story and Vanderbilt baseball proves Grantland Rice and David Williams were right on.

Thank you, Dylan Adams; thank you, Coach Corbin; thank you, Adam Sparks of the Nashville Tennessean.

It was a good cry.

Let’s keep trying to do it the right way:

https://www.tennessean.com/story/sports/college/vanderbilt/2020/11/05/vanderbilt-baseball-uniforms-dylan-adams-cancer-kumar-rocker/6073456002/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=keywee-retargeting&gps-source=adkwtnr&utm_content=dolookalikegeneral&kwp_0=1801974&kwp_4=5271536&kwp_1=2248219&fbclid=IwAR1IKDIA4jie3xKZvNuR2zUlCrbK0vhz7ZeSHXPc-DvLIPVl3XtWPOFsd1c

i have a number of photos my father gave me, not included in the family albums, not those he sent back to home to his wife, mother, and other family members. Some of these he gave me I will never show to anyone other than my brother or very close male friends. They are photos of war.

This one is not very clear. It may be my favorite.

It is the picture of a man in a world so far removed from his own world in the middle of Tennessee, a good man with only good intentions in his heart, a half world away from all he knew, including a newborn son he had seen for about three or four days before he boarded a “liberty” ship to sail.

He stands in a seascape. From my stops in that part of the world, inland from the scene is most likely a jungle. He is alone…almost. There is another sailor, most likely another Seabee, a silhouette on the beach behind him. The scene is pacific, but the specter of war and death for another cause of domination surrounds him.

Yet he stands proud, at attention, a sailor committed to defend his way of life with all of its goodness and flaws he hopes can be addressed and resolved.

He is there fighting for his life, his country, and in his mind, for the goodness of us all.

There is no such thing as a great war. But this one was the last fought for defending freedom, independence from tyranny, and equality of all men, even when all of us (and I use the term “men” in the sense of all human kind) were not considered equal. It was the last war in defense of us, not for vengeance or our protection of others on our side as all the wars and combat after that one have been. Those lines of what is necessary to protect our country are now blurred.

He and his brethren did not fight for a political party, not even a religion, but for a way of life that promised freedom in the belief all men (again the inclusive term) have inalienable rights.

So here he is, my father, on a hill beyond a beach in the South Pacific. I’m guessing it’s in New Guinea, one of his stops, 1944.

This is a photo of a defender of rights and freedom.

For twenty-two years, i too served to defend those things my father supported. But my service was a choice. His was a willingness to leave his way of life.

Yet all veterans chose to sacrifice the life they knew to serve. I am proud to say there is a lineage from my father to me to my son-in-law.

Those folks should be honored today with a moment of silence, of thanks.

God bless all of you who have stepped up for good, not just us or our country, but for all of mankind, again the inclusive term.