Few Will Gobble Up These Tips

When it comes to talking turkey, few do it better than the first-graders of Fruitdale Elementary School in Grants Pass, Ore. As an annual Thanksgiving event, Fruitdale students are asked to give their culinary tips for the traditional holiday meal. Kevin Lyon offers a clever bit of advice, suggesting that one choose “a turkey with no feathers.” To Angie McIntosh, it was a matter of degrees: “Put it (turkey) in the oven at 20 degrees for seven hours, or until 450 degrees shows on the thermometer.” Getting quickly to the heart of the issue, Gregory Lankford says: “Get its guts out.” Then, stuff it, he says. The stuffing, he adds, is made with salt, pepper and a box of noodles. Felicia Jarvis, on the other hand, thinks stuffing is really for the birds. Leave the bird empty, her recipe says, but she adds that you should “wash it with whale oil” to give it a special flavor. Then, cook it for an hour at 2 degrees. Although cooking times vary considerably in the recipes, Stacy Johnson provides a logical first-grade answer: “Put a clock in it to say how long it cooks.”

--Without saying why, John LaCorte of Brooklyn, N.Y., revised his recent offer of $1,000 to women who could prove they were virgins at age 19. The retired insurance salesman now says that winners, who will be chosen in a lottery each June, instead will have the opportunity to attend seminars on becoming “a good mother, a good wife, a good housekeeper.” LaCorte, 78, says: “A lot of children today have no parents. That’s very wrong. We’re trying to bring out a new consciousness, to improve the country.” LaCorte, who says that he has set up a $100,000 endowment to finance the program, adds: “Virginity means self-respect, self-discipline. It means good mothers and good families. . . . If a young girl can learn to say no, the young boys will learn to respect them more.”

--In a way, Mae Rose Owens of Winter Park, Fla., finally has her revenge. On May 9, 1981, a ground collapse swallowed her three-bedroom home, along with sections of two streets, a part of a municipal swimming pool and park, six cars, trees and power lines. The Great Winter Park Sinkhole, 260 feet at its widest point, was then filled with water, and the city spent more than $1 million restoring most of the property and turning it into a park. But the question remained: Is it a lake or simply a water-filled hole? This week, the City Commission answered the question. It named the water-filled cavity Lake Rose, after Mrs. Owens, 72. The land, she said, “belonged to me when it was whole, so I think I should have that recognition. . . . I had been there for 40-some years.”