C3 Patent and Intellectual Property Law

Apr132011 | Steve O'Donnell

The Days of Turkey Roll

Last night, for a reason unknown to me, the thought of turkey roll invaded my mind.

If you’ve never had turkey roll, you should feel lucky. Turkey roll is essentially a giant hotdog, maybe 5 inches in diameter and a few feet long, made out of turkey. At least I think it’s turkey, I’m assuming the government somehow regulates what can be called turkey. However, I’m pretty sure that it’s not made out of the part of a turkey that people willingly eat. Rather, it’s probably little bits mechanically scraped off of bones, with a generous serving of eyeballs and genitals.

It seems that most people’s memories of turkey roll are limited to a couple sandwiches from high school or from a gas station (I don’t think it can be served to prisoners). My experience with this gastronomic disaster goes a little deeper.

My parents ran a small catering business on the side. When I tell that to most people, they’ll respond with something like “wow, that must have been a great learning experience for you” or “wow, you’re lucky, your mom must have been a great cook.” Sadly, neither was the case. First, the name of the business was “Ken and Barb’s Food Service.” Say that in your head a few times, now say it aloud. That should tell you everything you need to know about the business. Note: it’s not a “Catering Service,” it’s a “Food Service.”

The business was not geared towards serving delicate petits fours to powerful business leaders. The clientele were people that would base every decision about their wedding on price. Not that doing so is such a bad thing, most people have to watch the bottom line quite carefully, but my parents did seem to attract the extremely cheap. That was not helped at all by them deciding to compete solely on price.

To keep their costs down, there was no separate phone line for the business, every call to the house came to the same dark green rotary phone that was wired about 10 feet from the TV. A typical evening would consist of me having to listen to my mom discuss menu options with a bride-to-be while I was trying to watch Good Times (“there’s chicken, ham, or chicken and ham.” Seriously, those were the options. With enough planning, there could be roast beef, but that was harder to plate in a production line so my mom didn’t mention it unless asked).

Not to disparage my parents. They worked very hard to keep me fed and clothed and I thank them for that. I’m pretty sure that if I ever had to work a single week like my father did for most of his life, I would die. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t make fun of their business.

Along with the chicken and turkey-ham, which was by far the most popular choice, there would be mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and some of whatever canned vegetable was cheapest that week--usually corn. Rolls and butter would be on the tables themselves. A half dozen rolls per table of eight, along with a full stick of butter. I never quite understood that. I’ve never been to a wedding, funeral, diner, potluck, church fundraiser, or gas station, that served less appetizing food than my mother would. Honestly, I think that is mostly a “familiarity breeding contempt” problem, since most people seemed to like what she served.

Of course, Mom would always plan for a few uninvited people showing up and make a few extra servings of everything. Sometimes there were extra people that showed up, but more commonly we had lots of food left over. Generally, you can assume attrition of at least 10% from those that RSVP yes to an event. So, if a wedding was supposed to be 200 people, my mom would usually aim for around 180. Sometimes, especially if the weather was bad (this was in Minnesota, so the weather was usually bad), the no-show amount would be closer to 25% or more. My mom would pass out the leftovers to her workers and then feed the rest to me and my dad. Our home refrigerator was usually full of number 10 cans (the big ones that chickpeas come in at Costco) filled with mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and corn. There might also be 25-50 oven-fried chicken quarters. I guess it’s better than having no food, but I would often wistfully pine for some variety.

So far, this has nothing to do with turkey roll, I’m getting to that.

Sometimes people die. Often, the family of the deceased will feel compelled to feed mourners something. I never quite understood that. I’m hoping to have my funeral first thing in the morning so my family can get by with serving Froot Loops and PopTarts. If that doesn’t work, then I’d like it to be after 9:00 PM so we can serve nachos and beer.

Sometimes, though, the family of the recently deceased wants to treat all the mourners to a lunch, typically of the fare one would expect from a crappy picnic--i.e., cold sandwiches and chips. My mom would happily feed cold cuts to mourners. In the interest of keeping costs low, she would purchase big deli-type logs of processed meats and cheeses and run them though her slicer. I would often have the task of arranging slices of meat and cheese in a spiral pattern on large serving platters. Most often, her meats of choice would be whatever summer sausage was on sale and turkey-ham (shh, no one was to be told that it was turkey-ham and not actual ham--they’ll never know otherwise), but occasionally, when the stars aligned just right, and the turkey roll was on sale because it was nearing it’s expiration date, she would purchase a log of turkey roll.

The turkey roll logs (I don’t think logs is the right name for the unit of measurement, but it works) were 5 inches in diameter and 3 feet long. If you’ve never seen turkey roll, it has an appearance and texture, or lack of texture, similar to a hot dog, only instead of being dyed to resemble beef, it’s dyed to resemble turkey. Although it had an overall consistent grey-ish beige color, there would be veins or clumps of darker “meat” that has a slightly grainer texture. I was never sure if those were because of an actual difference in how white and dark meat wound up being pressed together, or if it was a ruse designed so that the chub would more closely simulate food. I guess it doesn’t matter. I preferred the darker, grainer regions.

Picture a giant hot dog being cut in to slices so that mourners can place some on a white bread roll with a slice of American cheese and you can appreciate that a 3 foot log will produce a lot of slices, more than a typical funeral can go through, especially when they also have delicious turkey-ham (again, quiet about the turkey-ham). Granted, the hundred or thousands that might show up for the funeral of a head of state or a popular entertainer could easily go though a turkey roll, perhaps several, but those people were not my parents’ target market. The turkey-ham, salami, and even the cheese could be frozen and used for the next funeral, but the turkey roll did not thaw well. She tried, God bless her, she tried, but on thawing it would collapse into a turkey scented, grey-ish beige goop.

Turkey roll then, was not only purchased when on sale, but also only when she had two or more funerals scheduled in a single week. It truly was an event.

Still though, that’s a lot of processed turkey to go through and there was always leftover turkey roll that couldn’t be frozen, so it would sit in the fridge next to the oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and corn. Now, having an abundance of an ingredient isn’t really a bad thing, if you’re creative. Sadly, as evidenced by the name “Ken and Barb’s Food Service,” creative was not a adjective generally used to describe my parents.

There were no turkey croquettes, no turkey tetrazzini, no General Tso’s turkey, no Kung Pow turkey, no turkey pad thai, no turkey chili, no turkey bolognese, no turkey casserole, no turkey pot pie, no turkey quiche, no curried turkey, no turkey paprikash, and no turkey hash. There were cold turkey roll sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise, and there were hot turkey roll sandwiches served with mashed potatoes and covered in gravy. Since there was always rapidly aging mashed potatoes and gravy in the fridge, guess what we had most often? It’s very sad when you find yourself wishing for a cold sandwich with mayo.

That particular type of hot sandwich seems to be a midwest thing. As it’s normally served in diners across the plains, a meat sandwich is made with white bread (usually dry, but sometimes on buttered bread, if you wanted to get fancy), cut diagonally, and artfully arranged on a platter so that a large scoop of mashed potatoes could fit between the sandwich halves. Then, the whole thing is covered in gravy. The need for such food is evident if you’ve visited the upper mid-west, specifically, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and maybe Iowa. In those states, there is always the chance of a crippling snow storm striking while you’re out and exposed to the elements. Really, it can be the middle of July and you’re in a park playing frisbee golf when, boom! Snow storm, -20F, 100 mile an hour winds and hail the size of hybrid cars. If that happens, hopefully you have a hearty and hot meal in your stomach or you might not even make it to your car to get out your emergency parka and snow shoes. I believe Paul Bunyan’s cook created the sandwich in the 1800s to save on the number of bears that would have to be cut open and crawled into to survive those sudden storms.

I didn’t realize that the sandwich wasn’t common outside of the midwest until I served one such roast beef sandwich to my Pennsylvanian wife. I’m sure she looked at it with eyes full of love, turned her head towards me and said something like “Steve, what do you call this?” However, I more clearly remember the subtext, which was closer to “what the fuck is this shit?”

I went to the store today and looked in the deli case for turkey roll. I didn’t see it, and didn’t have the nerve to ask for it, because if I had asked, and they had it, I would have been compelled to buy some, and even though I’m sure it would transport me back to my childhood, I never really liked turkey roll so I’d rather just watch Scooby Doo or something.

Maybe it’s one of those foods than lived through it’s glory days and is now just isn’t widely available. You just can’t find liver or tripe as easily as you could years ago. Braunschweiger is another such food that I haven’t seen in years, although I admit, I haven’t looked for that. My mother also would serve something she called “liver paste” which was a thoroughly unpleasant spread (I can’t quite call it a pâté) she’d make with braunschweiger, mayonnaise, onion, and Worcestershire sauce; but that’s a story for another day.

Or maybe turkey roll was banned by the international community. I prefer to think that’s the case.

 *****
So, how does that short story fit into my blog which usually discusses matters of intellectual property? I’m not quite sure. I wanted to write that and didn’t want to start another blog just for that, since I might lose interest in the theme, leaving a blog with one post floating out there.

I think I can fit it in conceptually however. It is a creative work, so it is automatically covered by copyright. If someone scrapes my blog and posts it, I think I can probably find out pretty easily by setting up a Google alert for “turkey roll,” since, thankfully, it’s not a popular search term.

If I do not register the copyright in a timely manner, and someone scrapes this story, I could sue them and recover actual damages/profits and get an injunction against them. For this short, short story, I doubt damages would be worth the filing fee in federal court.

If on the other hand, I do promptly register my copyright in this story, and someone scrapes it to fill up their own blog I could recover statutory damages, which are much more attractive to a plaintiff ($750-$30k, maybe even as high as $150k if the infringement is willful).

So, just to be clear, as of the time I wrote the above it was copyrighted. I have also registered it with the copyright office to put myself in a better position if someone scrapes it or otherwise infringes my work. A question I have is whether the automated nature of blog scrappers argues against a finding of willful infringement. If it comes up, I’ll have to look into that further.