The bizarre true story of the Pilgrim turkey rapist

I always turn to history, our most reliable teacher, any time I become convinced modern man has cornered the market on folly and wickedness.

That’s how I found myself immersed in Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2006 book, “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community & War.”

I read everything he writes. He’s one of our very best historians, if not the very best. And like another national treasure, David McCullough, Philbrick hails from Pittsburgh, a place where people are renown for working hard and playing hard.

So I like to imagine Philbrick and McCullough spending a full day unraveling historic minutia and then marching into the friendly neighborhood tavern to share the juicy bits with the regulars, sort of like me only with acclaim, purpose and actual income.

Philbrick must be a veritable cornucopia of interesting facts.

For instance, I for years believed the kindergarden version of the Pilgrim story, that they fled England because of narrow-minded religious persecution and came to America where they made nice with the Indians before beginning to practice their own brand of narrow-minded religious persecution.

“Mayflower” teaches there was so much more to it. In fact, the Pilgrims had the good grace to wait three full years before beheading a once-friendly Indian, effectively ending the cultural share of those early Thanksgivings.

I make no hypocritical judgements. The Pilgrims must have by then been feeling about the Indians the way most of us feel about in-laws.

I figured this brutal beheading and subsequent killing spree would be my take-away fact from the book, the one I’d use to spoil my daughters’ fairytales about the Thanksgiving holiday. It was the same way when I told them there is no Santa Claus, which I did out of spite a few years ago when they agreed with their mother I was weird for liking Bob Dylan.

That was before I got to page 186.

Now’s the time for those of you with prim sensitivities to get back to your Sudoku puzzles.

Because this is very disturbing. I’ll leave it to Philbrick.

“In 1642, seventeen-year-old Thomas Granger was convicted of having sexual relations with ‘a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey.’ Taking their lead from Leviticus, Governor Bradford and his fellow magistrates executed Granger on September 8, 1642, but not before the boy was forced to witness the killing of his animal paramours, which were all buried in a pit.”

That is now what I call a brain barnacle, something no amount of alcohol or power spraying will ever succeed in scrubbing from my memory.

I mean, just wow.

Makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?

Filled with this information, I rushed downstairs to the bar to enliven the Happy Hour.

The inebriates were stunned, a rare case of the gassed being aghast.

We talked motives, facts and consequences. One sudsy sage was convinced he could have earned Granger an acquittal on the grounds that gentle farm animals were the only logical recourse for an adolescent boy in the throes of Pilgrim puberty.

“I mean, have you seen Pilgrim women?”

We wondered if Granger could be considered a founding father. Not of America, certainly.

Of PETA.

I argued that the Pilgrims, not Obama, were the ones who brought Sharia law to our shores when they slew all the animals Granger was said to have raped.

Talk about blaming the victim.

And of course, this being a story about the Pilgrims, we talked turkey.

I mean, how on earth does a man look at a turkey and think it a suitable target for sexual satisfaction? The logistics defy reason.

Yes, I understand turkeys have anatomical breasts, but even our chemically souped-up ones don’t have what you call real hooters.

The mind boggles.

From his profile drawn from the other victims, you’d think Granger would have been more of an ass man. But if that’s the case, then why wasn’t a donkey among the victims?

The inclusion of a turkey as a victim leads me to believe the charges against the boy may have been fraudulent, that the prosecutor bore him some unimaginable grudge and was intent on infuriating the jurors. And presumably nothing ruffles Pilgrim feathers more than an accusation of deviant feather ruffling.

I don’t know what the rest of the book holds. I may never know. I just keep reading that one paragraph on page 186 over and over.

Maybe more wickedness will ensue. Maybe I’ll learn that the perniciousness of people we were raised to think of as quaint and wholesome surpasses even that of our own depraved society. 

I guess all I’ll ever really know is that Pilgrims really, really love their turkeys.

Related . . .

• Warning: My first adult content post!

• Horsin’ ‘round in the ol’ breed barn

RRS from '11: Custer's last penis

I wrote this in September ’11 and at the time correctly predicted the topic would lead to an onslaught of readers who’d arrive after googling “Custer’s penis.” That’s exactly what happened. A week doesn’t go by without someone somewhere showing up at my blog after typing the “Custer’s penis” search term. It’s not a top 10 story, but probably a top 12. Enjoy your Sunday and … Let’s Go Steelers!”

The topic of General George Armstrong Custer’s penis has been on my mind for several months now. Please don’t take that literally and get that awful image out of your head this instant.

I’ll not change my profile picture to accommodate your lurid imagination.

It’s been there since about March when I finished Nathaniel Philbrick’s “The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull & The Battle of Little Big Horn.”

I’ve been reluctant to address it -- the topic, not the penis -- for several reasons. First, it’s just so unseemly, as patient readers are about to learn.

Second, I know the instant I type “general custer’s penis” into a subject line it may awaken a sleeping automatronic army of Custer devotees who stir when the computer pings over that very subject.

They’re probably all very pleasant and informed people. Certainly, they’re history buffs like myself and we’d no doubt find much agreeable ground to discuss.

But the mutilated penis of a historically inept general is an unsound basis for lasting friendship. I’d much rather engage someone over, say, a shared fondness of Mark Knopfler music.

I tackle the topic now because a part of me that is very dear made what very well could be its last stand three weeks ago.

I am, of course, talking about my hair.

I’ve had long, luscious hair several times in my adult days and it’s always controversial. My many redneck friends, several of them former servicemen, stereotypically tease I’m some sort of sissy.

One joked it looked like I’d enlisted. Really, I asked? What century?

Because the second most enduring memory of the Custer era has to do with military hair. It was everywhere.

It cascaded down their shoulders. It spilled over their lips, cheeks and chins.

It was mostly that way with the mustachioed Custer, too, in 1876, the year he met his doom. Yes, one of America’s most famous and beloved generals could have time traveled a century hence and fit right in on stage with the Village People.

So when did short hair become so synonymous with our servicemen?

The most obvious answer is when the military became more mechanized. Perhaps some long-locked solider got his curls twisted in a Gatling gun. Or maybe it was for sanitary purposes, short hair giving crafty head lice fewer places to hide.

Either way, it’s a pity. Some of the greatest fighting men in literature and history -- Zeus, Samson, Robert the Bruce -- had long hair.

In fact, all the braves who slew Custer at Little Big Horn had what could be called Cher hair.

Yet, these long hairs were often virile and lady-loving men. Take Custer nemesis, Capt. Frederick Benteen, not to be confused with Capt. Benteen from the outstanding 1963 “Twilight Zone” episode, “On Thursday We Leave for Home.”

This Capt. Benteen was a warrior with an artistic bent. From Philbrick’s book: “He loved his wife, Frabbie, intensely and passionately (he sometimes decorated his letters to her with anatomically precise drawings of his erect penis).”

So primitive sexting pre-dated the smart phone by nearly 130 years.

Philbrick is even more emphatic when detailing Custer’s lusts. It turns out the man whose name is most synonymous with American military catastrophe was a serial rapist who repeatedly violated Indian women as the spoils of war.

One of the last quotes attributed to him in the book deals not with military strategy, but of sexual violence: “When we get to the village I’m going to find the Sioux girl with the most elk teeth on her dress and take her along with me!”

The reference goes unexplained, but I’ll bet elk teeth dresses aren’t synonymous with a squaw’s ability prepare a tasty meal.

His reputation for wanton massacre, treaty violation and rape was so renown that two Cheyenne women pierced the ear drums of his lifeless body with long sewing awls in the hopes he’d hear better in the afterlife. How thoughtful.

What I’d never heard before -- and can now never forget -- is those same women jammed an arrow up the general’s penis. The afterlife lesson they were trying to impart there eludes me.

So what are we to make of this man once so beloved by his contemporaries and today reviled by those of us who abhor war crimes and injustice? What would say to his spirit?

I do not know. All I know is we’ll have plenty of time to decide.

We’re bound to see Custer coming from a mile away.

Related . . .

The true story of the Pilgrim turkey rapist

Dickin’ ‘round with Moby and other whales

Indians, Custer, downed trees & me

Boston Corbett, America’s greatest eunuch

My strange date to the whale movie

(815 words)

When I heard the movie was being released, I got super excited. I marked the date on the calendar and told my wife to get her costume ready.

“Star Wars?”

Nope.

Sure, we’ll see it, but I’m baffled by the multitudes who are treating “Star Wars” like it’s “Resurrection II,” a can’t-miss blockbuster starring, I guess, Christian Bale —  if casting guy named Christian to play Christ isn’t too obvious.

I’m talking about “In the Heart of the Sea,” the Ron Howard movie about one of my favorite books that is about one one of my favorite books. The Pittsburgh-born Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 book is a dandy.

I’d never known “Moby-Dick” was based on the factual and horrific story of the Nantucket whaleship Essex which in 1821 was sunk by a vengeful sperm whale.

The catastrophic sinking threw the captain and 20 crew into three 25-foot whale boats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean about 2,000 miles from the nearest land mass.

The wreck left them adrift without any rational hope of salvation.

The men were stranded 95 days and endured horrific ordeals of having to drink their own urine and consume their dead shipmates’ bodies down to the bones to survive.

The perfect date movie!

Of course, now many of you know the movie is a huge bomb. Critics are saying the movie about the sinking of the Essex is the biggest disaster since, well, the sinking of the Essex.

So I couldn’t make my wife go. She’d hate it.

It was the perfect guy movie, sure, but trying to get 3, 4 or 5 guys together to see a real guy movie involves so many whiny logistics it always makes me ashamed to even admit I’m a real guy.

So there was only one thing left to do.

It was time to snag me some strange.

“Strange” is what some crass men used to call an intimate encounter with an unfamiliar woman.

That wouldn’t do for me.

I needed real strange. Huge strange. That only meant one thing.

I took Mom.

They don’t come any stranger than her.

She turns 83 on Saturday, but don’t quiz her on it.

She’s been spiraling downhill for five years for now. Her memory is shot.

It’s a pity. Her vibrant sense of humor always reminds me of what would happen if Carol Burnett and Ellen DeGeneres brainstormed to create themselves a fairy godmother.

I’ve had people tell me that when their loved ones succumbed to dementia, they swapped personalities; nice ones became mean and vice versa.

Given her innate joyfulness, I feared she might become a real whopper of a bitch, but that’s not happened.

If anything she’s become even sweeter, often cloyingly so. Everything is beautiful! The world is perfect! People are wonderful!

She makes Fred Rogers seem like Grumpy Cat.

It usually drives me to fits of sarcastic correction, but as I’d spent the previous evening watching the Republican presidential debate, I figured an afternoon with her would restore some soulful balance to the universe.

And it was kind of a test. Her TV is never off, but the channel is always changing. Her watching TV always reminds me of the part of “The Price Is Right” where they spin the big wheel only with Mom the wheel spins for eternity.

I wanted to see if she could actually sit through a feature movie, if she could absorb any of the plot. Who knows? It might be a fun escape and an entertaining new way for us to spend time together.

I did enjoy the movie. The story was compelling, the action first-rate and the scenes involving gruesome shipmate cannibalism were handled in a way I guess you could call “tasteful.”

And Mom seemed to like it, too. She didn’t fidget or talk or try and strike up any distracting friendships with fellow movie-goers. She just just spent two full hours staring straight at the screen.

As we strolled out to the car, I asked what she thought.

“I thought it was great!”

I asked what part she found most memorable.

She asked me to remind her what it was about.

I told her it was about fishing.

“What else?”

Boats.

“What else?”

The warm fellowship that comes from dining together.

“Oh.”

I asked if there was anything at all she remembered about the movie she’d seen just moments before.

“I thought Tom Cruise was great!”

Unless Cruise was acting like an 85-foot CGI whale, I don't think he was in the film.

We’re taking the steps to move her from the South Hills condo she’s called home since ’98 to a place nearer to us. I worry about the consequences of my decisions

I can’t shake the feeling that things are adrift with no rational hope of salvation.

I just can’t tell if the one drifting is me or Mom.

Related . . .

Dickin’ ‘round with Moby & other whales

How to kill your mother (with love)

Mom’s making crazy contagious by a nose

A son’s Mother’s Day lament

A stiff tribute to Mom’s and cadavers

Mom’s coming to my Lebo book signing

RRS: The true story of the Pilgrim turkey rapist

I’m eager to watch the Ric Burns documentary, “The Pilgrims,” on PBS Thursday evening. They say it’s a dark take on the first Thanksgiving that includes famine, intolerance, beheadings — nothing at all like the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving being shown at the same time on ABC.

I’ll watch the dark version in the hopes it’ll relate the tale of the Pilgrim turkey rapist.

I wrote about America’s first true animal love in 2012.

I always turn to history, our most reliable teacher, any time I become convinced modern man has cornered the market on folly and wickedness.

That’s how I found myself immersed in Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2006 book, “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community & War.”

I read everything he writes. He’s one of our very best historians, if not the very best. And like another national treasure, David McCullough, Philbrick hails from Pittsburgh, a place where people are renown for working hard and playing hard.

So I like to imagine Philbrick and McCullough spending a full day unraveling historic minutia and then marching into the friendly neighborhood tavern to share the juicy bits with the regulars, sort of like me only with acclaim, purpose and actual income.

Philbrick must be a veritable cornucopia of interesting facts.

For instance, I for years believed the kindergarten version of the Pilgrim story, that they fled England because of narrow-minded religious persecution and came to America where they made nice with the Indians before beginning to practice their own brand of narrow-minded religious persecution.

“Mayflower” teaches there was so much more to it. In fact, the Pilgrims had the good grace to wait three full years before beheading a once-friendly Indian, effectively ending the cultural share of those early Thanksgivings.

I make no hypocritical judgements. The Pilgrims must have by then been feeling about the Indians the way most of us feel about in-laws.

I figured this brutal beheading and subsequent killing spree would be my take-away fact from the book, the one I’d use to spoil my daughters’ fairytales about the Thanksgiving holiday. It was the same way when I told them there is no Santa Claus, which I did out of spite a few years ago when they agreed with their mother I was weird for liking Bob Dylan.

That was before I got to page 186.

Now’s the time for those of you with prim sensitivities to get back to your Sudoku puzzles.

Because this is very disturbing. I’ll leave it to Philbrick.

“In 1642, seventeen-year-old Thomas Granger was convicted of having sexual relations with ‘a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey.’ Taking their lead from Leviticus, Governor Bradford and his fellow magistrates executed Granger on September 8, 1642, but not before the boy was forced to witness the killing of his animal paramours, which were all buried in a pit.”

That is now what I call a brain barnacle, something no amount of alcohol or power spraying will ever succeed in scrubbing from my memory.

I mean, just wow.

Makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?

Filled with this information, I rushed downstairs to the bar to enliven the Happy Hour.

The inebriates were stunned, a rare case of the gassed being aghast.

We talked motives, facts and consequences. One sudsy sage was convinced he could have earned Granger an acquittal on the grounds that gentle farm animals were the only logical recourse for an adolescent boy in the throes of Pilgrim puberty.

“I mean, have you seen Pilgrim women?”

We wondered if Granger could be considered a founding father. Not of America, certainly.

Of PETA.

I argued that the Pilgrims, not Obama, were the ones who brought Sharia law to our shores when they slew all the animals Granger was said to have raped.

Talk about blaming the victim.

And of course, this being a story about the Pilgrims, we talked turkey.

I mean, how on earth does a man look at a turkey and think it a suitable target for sexual satisfaction? The logistics defy reason.

Yes, I understand turkeys have anatomical breasts, but even our chemically souped-up ones don’t have what you call real hooters.

The mind boggles.

From his profile drawn from the other victims, you’d think Granger would have been more of an ass man. But if that’s the case, then why wasn’t a donkey among the victims?

The inclusion of a turkey as a victim leads me to believe the charges against the boy may have been fraudulent, that the prosecutor bore him some unimaginable grudge and was intent on infuriating the jurors. And presumably nothing ruffles Pilgrim feathers more than an accusation of deviant feather ruffling.

I don’t know what the rest of the book holds. I may never know. I just keep reading that one paragraph on page 186 over and over.

Maybe more wickedness will ensue. Maybe I’ll learn that the perniciousness of people we were raised to think of as quaint and wholesome surpasses even that of our depraved society. 

I guess all I’ll ever really know is that Pilgrims really, really love their turkeys.

Related . . .

• Warning: My first adult content post!

• Horsin’ ‘round in the ol’ breed barn

A return to re-runs! "Dickin' 'round with Moby and other whales"

A friend of mine said he was upset that it seemed like I’d gotten out of the habit of having regular re-runs on Sunday. He said not having re-runs meant it looked like I’d gotten blog lazy. It would be a fitting trajectory, in fact, because the blog is at its heart an exaltation of human laziness. But I’d hate to disappoint even one reader because on many days that seems like the sum total of readers in a Type-A world who enjoy reading about the duties of indolence.

I’ll submit my 1,500 post sometime this summer. Conceivably, I could now stop writing new posts and just recycle old posts from now through 2019.

But I’m not going to do that. I enjoy blogging too much. There’s something interesting enough to blog about every single day. If I could squeeze money out of it, I’d never cease.

I’m choosing to re-run this one because I just saw a trailer for the new Ron Howard movie, “In the Heart of the Sea,” to be released in March. It’s based on the outstanding Nathaniel Philbrick book that’s based on the real incident from which Melville based “Moby Dick.”

So, even if you think the following story is weak, none dare call it baseless.

Plus, this one starts out with what I think is one of the funniest lines I’ve ever written.

If people who revere the Grateful Dead are called Deadheads, what does that make those of us devoted to “Moby Dick”?

Hmmm . . .

There’s a bunch of us gathering today through Sunday for a 25-hour marathon “Moby Dick” reading at the New Bedford (Mass.) Whaling Museum. Hundreds of volunteers will take 10-minute turns reading aloud without interruption one of America’s great novels.

I wish I could be there.

I’ve been Dickin’ around for the better part of a month now. It all started when I saw Nathaniel Philbrick’s book, “Why Read Moby-Dick.” The slim volume obviously led to re-acquainting myself with Ishmael, Queequeg, Starbuck, mad Captain Ahab and that great white whale.

It’d been 10 years since I’d last read the book by Herman Melville, a man who overcame one of history’s nerdiest names to achieve literary immortality.

I, in fact, bought my “Moby Dick” at that very museum. It was June 2002. I was in New Bedford to write a feature story for People Magazine.

What the story was about is unimportant. What is important is that I had five days in New Bedford to immerse myself in whaling history, culture and to become acquainted with some of the sites and customs key to Melville’s 1851 story.

Did you know that Moby Dick was based on a true story?

In 1819, the 238-ton ship Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine whaling mission. Fifteen months later in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, she was attacked and sunk by an enraged 80-ton sperm whale. The aforementioned Philbrick details the story in his compelling 2000 book, “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.”

The sailors who survived the sinking were doomed to three months adrift in whale boats and desperation cannibalism to survive.

Melville took facts about the ill-fated Essex and extrapolated them into what can be called without exaggeration a true whale of a tale.

And did you know why men risked their lives to go the most remote reaches of the godforsaken globe to hunt the largest animals on earth?

These sailors craved whale sperm.

Now, it’s not what you think. And there was not even a bit of romance involved in getting the whales to part with their sperm or spermaceti, a substance that had nothing to do with whale reproduction. Not that it mattered.

No, these leviathans were slain and butchered aboard boats like the Essex to get at the vast oil-like spermaceti reservoirs that were used to light the world’s lamps and candles and provide unscented foundations for dozens of other of the day’s luxury goods.

For nearly 200 years whale spermaceit was considered among earth’s most precious resources. Fortunes rose and fell based on who was able to obtain it. 

Let’s for a moment, however, imagine without getting into whale porn how the story would be different if the sailors used, not deadly harpoons, but more traditional methods to extract true sperm. The sailors might ask the whale’s parents for an introduction, read it whale poems and earn its trust until intimacy ensued.

Or maybe they could find a really slutty whale and feed it a boatload of squid.

The former alternative scenario might make a dandy big-screen musical extravaganza with Nathan Lane playing Ahab.

It would be in keeping with the trajectory of the whale’s ever-softening reputation.

It’s like they’ve all lost their balls, although anatomically speaking I’ve never seen balls or a penis on any picture or drawing of a whale, even the one famously named Dick.

Moby Dick may be the last popular whale to enjoy a masculine-sounding handle (Melville never explained the name’s construction).

Check out these uni-sex names of current SeaWorld performers: Corky, Trua, Unna, Orkid and Tuar.

Huh?

Those aren’t killer whales. They’re Tele-Tubbies.

Of course, what the hell do I know?

I’m just another Dickhead, one who’ll remain forever fascinated about the story of whale named Dick who gave a one-legged captain an eternally hard time.

The true story of the Pilgrim turkey rapist

(790 words)

I always turn to history, our most reliable teacher, any time I become convinced modern man has cornered the market on folly and wickedness.

That’s how I found myself immersed in Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2006 book, “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community & War.”

I read everything he writes. He’s one of our very best historians, if not the very best. And like another national treasure, David McCullough, Philbrick hails from Pittsburgh, a place where people are renown for working hard and playing hard.

So I like to imagine Philbrick and McCullough spending a full day unraveling historic minutia and then marching into the friendly neighborhood tavern to share the juicy bits with the regulars, sort of like me only with acclaim, purpose and actual income.

Philbrick must be a veritable cornucopia of interesting facts.

For instance, I for years believed the kindergarden version of the Pilgrim story, that they fled England because of narrow-minded religious persecution and came to America where they made nice with the Indians before beginning to practice their own brand of narrow-minded religious persecution.

“Mayflower” teaches there was so much more to it. In fact, the Pilgrims had the good grace to wait three full years before beheading a once-friendly Indian, effectively ending the cultural share of those early Thanksgivings.

I make no hypocritical judgements. The Pilgrims must have by then been feeling about the Indians the way most of us feel about in-laws.

I figured this brutal beheading and subsequent killing spree would be my take-away fact from the book, the one I’d use to spoil my daughters’ fairytales about the Thanksgiving holiday. It was the same way when I told them there is no Santa Claus, which I did out of spite a few years ago when they agreed with their mother I was weird for liking Bob Dylan.

That was before I got to page 186.

Now’s the time for those of you with prim sensitivities to get back to your Sudoku puzzles.

Because this is very disturbing. I’ll leave it to Philbrick.

“In 1642, seventeen-year-old Thomas Granger was convicted of having sexual relations with ‘a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey.’ Taking their lead from Leviticus, Governor Bradford and his fellow magistrates executed Granger on September 8, 1642, but not before the boy was forced to witness the killing of his animal paramours, which were all buried in a pit.”

That is now what I call a brain barnacle, something no amount of alcohol or power spraying will ever succeed in scrubbing from my memory.

I mean, just wow.

Makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?

Filled with this information, I rushed downstairs to the bar to enliven the Happy Hour.

The inebriates were stunned, a rare case of the gassed being aghast.

We talked motives, facts and consequences. One sudsy sage was convinced he could have earned Granger an acquittal on the grounds that gentle farm animals were the only logical recourse for an adolescent boy in the throes of Pilgrim puberty.

“I mean, have you seen Pilgrim women?”

We wondered if Granger could be considered a founding father. Not of America, certainly.

Of PETA.

I argued that the Pilgrims, not Obama, were the ones who brought Sharia law to our shores when they slew all the animals Granger was said to have raped.

Talk about blaming the victim.

And of course, this being a story about the Pilgrims, we talked turkey.

I mean, how on earth does a man look at a turkey and think it a suitable target for sexual satisfaction? The logistics defy reason.

Yes, I understand turkeys have anatomical breasts, but even our chemically souped-up ones don’t have what you call real hooters.

The mind boggles.

From his profile drawn from the other victims, you’d think Granger would have been more of an ass man. But if that’s the case, then why wasn’t a donkey among the victims?

The inclusion of a turkey as a victim leads me to believe the charges against the boy may have been fraudulent, that the prosecutor bore him some unimaginable grudge and was intent on infuriating the jurors. And presumably nothing ruffles Pilgrim feathers more than an accusation of deviant feather ruffling.

I don’t know what the rest of the book holds. I may never know. I just keep reading that one paragraph on page 186 over and over.

Maybe more wickedness will ensue. Maybe I’ll learn that the perniciousness of people we were raised to think of as quaint and wholesome surpasses even that of our depraved society.

I guess all I’ll ever really know is that Pilgrims really, really love their turkeys.

Related . . .

• Warning: My first adult content post!

• Horsin’ ‘round in the ol’ breed barn