Please Note: The following story has been taken from John Wiens’ book: Along The Way with the permission of the author. Some of the names have been changed.
TRUHT HOEN
The Penner family had a pet turkey; they called “Truht Hoen” (meaning gobbler). Truht Hoen was a giant bird and ruled the Penner yard. One fall it was decided by the family that Truht Hoen’s time was up. He would bring in a few, much needed extra dollars for Christmas.
So one day Jake’s older brothers, Harry and John, grabbed a firm hold of Truht Hoen and carried out the necessary gory act of beheading him with an axe on a large firewood block. When they weighed his remains he tipped the scales at fifty-two pounds. After having plucked his feathers, eviscerating and dressing him, they sold him at a meat market in Kapuskasing.
Young Ernie, grieving for Truht Hoen, picked up his severed head, cleaned it and not quite knowing what to do with it, shoved it into his pants pocket. The next day he took it to school with him. When he showed Truht Hoen’s bald ugly head to the guys, with all the warts on it and the blood red appendages hanging from it, they admired it in awe.
However it was a much different story though when, in front of some girls, he calmly pulled this horrible, gruesome and most frightening thing out of his pocket. The girls all screamed in horror and fear. It made Ernie feel a lot better.
Then Ernie made a big mistake. In class, he just could not get his mind off the demise of poor old Truht Hoen, and so in grief at some point, he again casually pulled Truht Hoen’s head out of his pocket. After staring at it in private for a few moments. he decided to flash it in view of us, and some of the bigger girls who sat behind him. When they got a glimpse of the grizzly turkey gobbler’s head and face staring at them, the girls went into a crazy fit of screaming. Although it again made Ernie feel better, this time had he gone too far?
All classes were now disrupted. Mr. Thiessen investigated to see what the big problem was about. When he saw the gruesome evidence. Ernie was ordered to dispose of it. But how? He was not to toss it into the outhouse hole – the abyss of no return, for fear that as it decomposed it would raise the levels of obnoxious, unbearable methane gasses emitted from it even higher than they already were. Ernie was given a spade during the following recess and in an unceremonious burial in a nearby bush: Truht Hoen’s controversial head was finally laid to rest.
