Arthur "Turkey" Gehrke Re-visited!

As winter, once again approaches, and its cold embrace foreshadows itself once again unto our humble lives ... I can't help but, once again, think about the man who became famous for shunning winter in its entirety. This man's name, of course, was Arthur "Turkey" Gehrke.

In March of 2020, I wrote a quite-long fictional account of what I thought Turkey's life was like...

Ballad of Turkey: https://www.writingsonsubjects.com/2020/03/the-ballad-of-societys-most-greatest.html 

This short story I wrote over six years ago was really a form of writing I was not familiar with and it was sort of difficult for me to write a complete short fictional story. I tried to sort of take this interesting character from our society's past and create a sort of mythological nature to it. I find it funny that a man who sleeps all day can be a mythological figure.

I can't really go back and re-read stories I wrote. As the guy who writes them they exist in my head and on paper in only four formats. Imagination in my brain, words on a computer screen typed on my keyboard, proof-reading for spelling errors, and then a few weeks later I will re-read it in entirety after it is completely out of my brain/imagination to see what it actually looks to readers as.... and after this process I will never read them ever again.

The reason is because... if I go back and read them months or years later... when I have completely forgotten about them and I feel like a reader coming across them for the first time and reading it as a fresh new thing... I don't like them. I am really hard on my critiques of my own fiction... I will read the first paragraph and be like "what in the name of everything holy is this eternal tripe!? What in the world of worlds is this terrible work!? Was it written by none-other-than a common gutter snipe!?" 

I don't like going back and reading my stories, at all.

Also I will notice spelling errors I missed in the proof reading portion and get annoyed with myself and I will even notice factual inaccuracies that annoy me. There's two things in my fiction writing that I know were factually and historically inaccurate now that I think about it and I won't go back and edit them after years have passed... but yes... there are two glaring historical inaccuracies in my stories.

Firstly, in the historical archives that exist about the life of Turkey Gehrke... his bartender is named at one point. His bartender at the Turkey's Roost was known to be a man named Emil. In my story, I remember creating the name 'Mr. Hohmer' or something for this minor character. I have no idea why I called him this... the only thing I can think of is Snidely Whiplash on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show used to oft-times cohort with a fellow named Hohmer. I think it was from that.

The weirdest thing about this error to me... is the only time Turkey ever talks to his bartender in my story is to tell him he is having cool dreams about The Three Stooges. To me this is annoying because an actor on the Three Stooges and someone referred to at-times as "The Fourth Stooge" was an actor named Emil Sitka. I wrote about the Three Stooges in this portion and had a chance to incorporate the name Emil which would have been topical as in the historical accounts... Turkey's bartender was named Emil.

It annoys me greatly my err in thought... so I can't go back and re-read them. Part of me will want to edit a six year old short story to change the name of a minor character to be more factually accurate and to give a shout-out to actor Emil Sitka. That's how my brain actually thinks. I will consider my story as complete gutter snipery for making a historical inaccuracy and missing an opportunity to mention Emil Sitka.

Would you like to know another historical inaccuracy in one of my fictional stories that also greatly annoys me? Yes? Okay, I shall tell you. This one, by the way, will not only make me look weird but will make me look insane. I am very annoyed that in my story where powerful 70s detectives Kolchak and Kojak team up to infiltrate Greek Heaven and find an old baseball player because Kojak had a bizarre experience at a White Castle... yes... in this story that makes loads and loads of human sense... there is also a blaring historical inaccuracy. 

You see... when Kolchak and Kojak go to the university to see Ted Williams's (a man who hit .406 in 1941) frozen head... I was unaware that Ted Williams only died in 2002. In the 1970's, these two amazing people could not have seen Ted Williams's frozen brain... for he only died and had his brain frozen in 2002. 

The fact that Ted Williams had his brain frozen for posterity is in fact true and accurate though. I mean he did hit .406 in 1941 so obviously we, as a society, needed to preserve his brain.

So, yes, I don't like reading my old stories. I just see glaring errors in them and feel ashamed of how bad my writing is. Two blaring mental errors make me feel like my writing is totally invalidated and I am a large-sized sham.

Anyways, guys, let's get back to Turkey Gehrke... who by the way... after typing his name many dozens of times back in 2020... I never have to look up how to spell G-E-H-R-K-E. The "eh" sound helps me a lot. We tend to hear a lot of that sound in Canada, actually. When I spell his name I think... "EH"... and then build the name around that sound and never get it wrong. 

Would you like to know another difficult last name I can spell right each time without looking it up? Yes? Okay, I will tell you. I can, reader, write the last name of former Montreal Expo, St. Louis Cardinal, Colorado Rockie, Atlanta Brave, Texas Ranger, San Francisco Giant, and Anaheim Angel first baseman... Andres Galarraga... on the first try without looking it up.

Cool, eh?

I just remember... one "L", two "Rs", and one "G", baby, and I'm ready to write his name. Neat, huh? Yeah.

Alright...

You want to know something about Turkey that, I think, really makes him fascinating to me? In the early nineteen hundreds we had so much chaos afoot... like World War I and World War II... and stuff like that... and yet somehow amidst all of this chaos, violence, economic turmoil, and societal failure... somehow it is the guy who sleeps all day who is seen as "odd"? He is seen as a comical oddity... the man who slept all day and had a sandwich brought to him in a dumbwaiter by a man named Emil... this is the crazy one. I find that funny... I actually I remember trying to evoke this feeling when I wrote my story... I might have to go back and read it a bit to find it.

No, I remember it, I don't have to go back and look for it... in my story Turkey is reading the paper in the morning after sleeping for a whole winter... and the headlines are really scary stuff... like war in Europe, economic collapse... and he just brushes this off as totally boring... and the headline that catches Turkey's eye in my fictional account of this guy... is a story about a fellow down in Chicago eating a lot of bratwurst at a fair. 

He is fascinated by the bratwurst eaters of our world... he doesn't care very much for politics, war, economics, or things of that nature... but he is deeply interested in the guy who eats many sausages.

This is the same reason I am fascinated by Turkey. He is sort of order inside a world of chaos. It's the same reason I am interested in stuff like Buddhism and things of that nature. In a world of endless strife and never-ending chaos... this guy's over in Watertown just eating sandwiches and sleeping... and when winter is over and he is out and about... he's going bowling, buying galoshes, and caring about pro wrestling. He's an American Buddhist... or something. I dunno. He's like America's equivalent of Buddhist monks.

If I ever wrote another fictional mythological tale about a character of the past in this similar vein... I think I'd gravitate towards the "pole-sitters" of the 1920s. This fad in the 1920s had people putting small seats on flagpoles and sitting on them for numerous days trying to break each other's records. That's a type of stoicism of some nature... or something. Actually this wouldn't work. The pole-sitters have nothing in common with the legendary Turkey. Sitting on a pole for a month is torturous stupidity.... that's not very comfortable. It's not very sensible to sit on top of a flag pole for a month!

You know something? Turkey was a very sensible man. He really was. While everyone else is out fooling around doing silly things... this guy was eating, sleeping, and staying warm. He was a smart guy!

The guy was a genius!

Alright, so, as winter once again approaches and many regions shall become excruciatingly cold... let us think once more of Society's Most Influential Figure and my personal hero...

Arthur "Turkey" Gehrke.
The Man, The Myth, The Legend.
Once and for Ever.
The Guy that learned how to Sleep Well.
(1883 to 1942).

Stay warm out there, you guys!