

Thanksgiving Travel? Vermont Turkeys Used to Walk to Boston - oulipian
http://digital.vpr.net/post/thanksgiving-travel-vermont-turkeys-used-walk-boston

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shittyanalogy
You run a farm in northern Vermont that raises turkeys. You can get a decent
price for your birds by selling them locally but a much better price and can
sell many more if you take them to the folk in Boston. There are no trucks to
speak of, as they haven't been invented yet, so you gotta walk the 200 miles
with such a boisterous load. There's no ice block big enough to keep your
birds cold for that long of a journey and if there was, you couldn't pull it.
The birds gotta get there alive, and they can only do 10 - 12 miles a day. You
get a few neighboring farms to come with so you can watch each-other's birds
and have some company on the 3 week on the road. Along the way you loose about
10% of your flock to foxes, rivers, robbers, and your own hunger. You arrive
in Boston and get a fair price for your troubles, just enough to make the trip
worth it. You spend a few days getting back to Vermont and by the time you get
back it'll have been about a month on the road. You settle in for a rough
winter. You're gonna do it all again next year. At least there's plenty of
maple syrup.

