| before the lake |
The Terrible Turkey Tossing
Remembering Madison’s calamity at the courthouse.
STORY BY ANDREA GABLE | ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS BASSETT, M.D.
Traditions abound during the
holidays, many of which are
rooted in storytelling. Friends
and families may gather to
share stories of thanks around
the table. Some may hang
stockings with care and settle
in to hear “Twas the Night
Before Christmas.” But the story
that has made its way into
tradition for one local family is
a bit more “Southern gothic.”
Each year after a Thanksgiving
feast, the late Sen. Roy
Lambert of Madison would
whip out a tattered red book titled
“Down Drafts,” a collection
of newspaper columns written
by his childhood friend, Buddy
Atkinson. His finger would find
the familiar passage, and he
would begin to read. “What I
like about Louisville at Thanksgiving
time is that they don’t
throw free turkeys off the top
of the court house…”
“Our two daughters would
mouth the words along with
him,” says his wife, Christine
Lambert. “They knew it by
heart.”
As they should. For the past
48 years, the Lambert family
has heard the hilarious tale of
“The Terrible Turkey Tossing,”
a recounting of the day they
threw live turkeys off the top of
the courthouse in Madison as a
marketing stunt for downtown
merchants.
The absurdity was captured
in Atkinson’s column while he
worked at The Louisville Times
in Kentucky. The Madison
native later employed his
Southern wit as a writer for
“The Beverly Hillbillies.”
Today, Sen. Lambert’s son,
Zeke, carries on the family
tradition, reading about the
calamity at the courthouse that
is reprinted below.
Reprinted from “Down
Drafts,” published by The
Louisville Times, Louisville,
Kentucky, copyright 1948
By B.M. Atkinson, Jr.
What I like about Louisville at
Thanksgiving time is that they
don’t throw free turkeys off the
top of the court house. They
pulled that trick in my home
town in Georgia one time and
the old folks say that it compared
48 LAKE OCONEE LIVING | FALL 2022
favorably with the day
that Sherman came through.
It was during the depression
and some rascally turkey grower
convinced the merchants
that throwing free turkeys
off the top of the court house
would draw a lot of folks to
town. He sold them eight of
the leanest, meanest outlaw
turkeys that ever lived.
He was right about the crowd.
At high noon on Thanksgiving
eve the square was jammed
with turkey-chasers. They
thought it was going to be great
sport. When the man high up
in the tower of the court house
launched the first bird, they
started changing their minds
fast.
Instead of making a nice
polite, three point landing, the
big bird with the clipped wings
power dived into the chimney
of a print shop, knocking the
top half off and filling the shop
with smoke. The printer rushed
out to see what was happening
and was promptly knocked
down by a mass of turkey-mad
men heading for the wooden
fire escape leading to the roof.
They hit it at full speed and
the railing gave way and cut
down the field considerably.
The four men that finally
reached the roof got into an
awful argument and just about
finished off the chimney.
The second turkey lost flying
speed and crash landed in the
midst of a team of mules on the
other side of the square, which
caused quite a bit of confusion
as they were attached to a
wagon which they proceeded
to run away with.
The third turkey had a defeatist
complex and zoomed right
into the middle of the crowd
and nearly beheaded a good
churchwoman who said a lot
of things unbecoming a good
churchwoman after she got the
feathers out of her mouth.
What with the fire escape
collapsing, the men fishing on
the roof, the mules running
away and the churchwoman
wailing that her skull had been
fractured, the city fathers
began bellowing for the man to
stop launching turkeys. But the
turkeys kept coming.
The fourth one crashed
through the plate glass window
of a grocery store and the fifth
one headed for the crowd again
which caused a stampede,
as everybody remembered
what an unhealthy sound the
other one made when it hit the
churchwoman in the mouth.
It clipped a little boy in the
small of the back and ricocheted
up into a tree which
three men later fell out of, one
breaking his arm.
By this time everybody was
trampling all over everybody
else, not trying to catch turkeys
but to escape the monsters.
There was no quarter asked
and none given. The fleet headed
for open country, the slow
and decrepit took to the alleys.
The sixth turkey electrocuted
itself on some wires and the
seventh landed in a drugstore
where the proprietor announced
he would shoot down
the first man that scared it. The
bird crashed through a couple
of show cases and finally trampled
to death in the rush to the
door.
Some brave soul finally
reached the fiend in the tower
and when he announced that
the town was in shambles it
frightened the fiend so that
he launched the eighth turkey
without untying its legs and it
plummeted down 100 feel and
splattered all over the mayor
who was crawling up the steps
at the time.
The survivors had a lot to be
thankful for the next day.