Helping your neighbors with chores on their farms, looking out for their children, and knowing them all on a first name basis all belonged to everyday life in the Mokena of yore. In this bygone rural atmosphere, it wasn’t unusual to even know the local animals by sight. It so happens that this small town familiarity, mixed with a certain flock of turkeys, led to a particularly nasty lawsuit in the autumn of 1907.
At the center of this feathery affair was a young farmer named George McGovney. A member of a long established Mokena family, he noticed around October 20th of that year that about 25 of his bronze flock had gone missing. While collecting his mail not long thereafter at the post office on Front Street, McGovney heard some buzz that another farmer, one Peter Thimsen, had been seen herding some turkeys to his place. McGovney’s ears perked up, and as he didn’t know of Thimsen owning any turkeys, he grew suspicious.
He gathered an acquaintance, and together the two paid a visit to the Thimsen farm. As they walked onto the property, they were intercepted by Mrs. Thimsen, who claimed to know nothing about any new arrivals in the gobbler line. Nevertheless, McGovney had a look around, and while there, he inspected some winged fowl in a woodshed. At first sight, he knew these were his turkeys. He would recognize their distinctive legs anywhere, not to mention the fact that they gobbled with delight when they recognized him, McGovney would later proudly state.
So sure was George McGovney not only of the true identity of Peter Thimsen’s turkeys, but also of their competence, for upon a second visit, he told Thimsen directly that if he turned the birds loose, they’d surely find their way back to the McGovney place on their own. If they didn’t, Thimsen could consider them a gift. At some point, in a less lucid period for McGovney, he also challenged Thimsen to settle the issue in the road with fisticuffs. Stoically, Thimsen wouldn’t have it, although he would later quip that he couldn’t fight without first having been given the chance to switch the slippers he was wearing for sturdier boots.
The supposed brazen theft of these winged creatures set off a firestorm in Mokena. George McGovney enlisted the help of the village constable, who compelled Thimsen to let the gobblers go, although this itself would prove to be a prickly incident – neighbors wondered how close McGovney was to the turkeys during their trot home. Was it not more like a forceful drive? By November, the case landed in court at the county seat before Judge A.O. Marshall. The whole trial was a debacle of hilarious airs; a debate flared over the proper method of lifting a turkey, a witness named George Smith was called to the stand and it was discovered that this man was the wrong Smith, and on one occasion, Judge Marshall sternly rebuked the jury for laughing during testimony, warning them that George McGovney “probably knows more about raising turkeys than you do.”
The turkey fiasco also had the misfortune of being tried in the days immediately before Thanksgiving, when it received coverage in the Joliet Weekly News. Reporters laughed themselves silly with wordplay; the Thanksgiving day issue having enjoyed such headlines as “Turkey with Legal Sauce” and “Talk Turkey in Court Today”. The columns cracked that the jury had “thirteen good men smacking their lips” and that it “tickled the palates of Circuit Court”.
The trial took up two whole days, and on Thanksgiving Eve, November 27th, 1907, the verdict was in. Peter Thimsen was to return the turkeys to George McGovney, and to pay him $60 for his trouble. So Mokenians, enjoy your rich, hearty Thanksgiving feasts, may the cranberries, sweet potatoes, and stuffing delight your taste buds. Just double check that the turkey is actually yours.
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