Just a brief interruption before I start posting my Italy stories, back to Davis again, here is a sketch from last week drawn downtown on the corner of 4th and F. Oh it’s been hot in Davis. There was a heatwave while we were gone, and another after we were back, oh and there’s more heat coming. Davis in summertime! Well one thing we learned this week was the death of one of the true characters of downtown Davis in recent history. I say ‘death’, I should say ‘assassination’, really. I’m talking of course about Downtown Tom. Downtown Tom was a turkey. I don’t mean he was like a turkey, I mean he was an actual turkey called Downtown Tom. There should be a ballad about him. Actually I’d be massively surprised if there isn’t already a ballad about him. “The Downfall of Downtown Tom”.  There has been a Turkey Problem in Davis for a number of years now, (I can just imagine Downtown Tom now, narrowing his eyes, growling, “What Turkey Problem?”) with fairly large flocks of the wild birds wandering the town, digging up mud. jumping on roofs, annoying postmen, I don’t know, whatever turkeys do. We get loads of them in my neighbourhood in north Davis, I would see them outside my house all the time, loads of them. Huge things they are too. I tell people back in London and they don’t believe me, they say things like “why don’t you just catch them and cook it for dinner?” like that is just the easiest thing in the world, just catch and kill a massive turkey with my bare hands, somehow waster half the day trying to skin it and then spend the next week trying to cook it, for what exactly? I’d rather just go to Burger King. Of course people in London go out hunting wild animals for food with their bare hands every day I expect, it’s so easy, no it isn’t, just go to Lidl. Anyway, we have a lot of turkeys. As was reported in the Davis Enterprise recently, the city recently formed a “Wild Turkey Population Management Plan” to move the turkeys to a different part of California where they can’t block Davis traffic or dig up verges or whatever they were doing and a whole bunch were sent off to the country, but Tom…

Downtown Tom was a loner. He didn’t hang with the other turkeys. I don’t know if they banquished him, maybe he lost a trial-by-stone to become the new turkey emperor, or maybe he was just too cool to hang out with those squares in the suburbs, whatever his deal was, Downtown Tom became a local legend. None of us will ever have a name as cool as Downtown Tom. I used to see him wandering about by himself, and I saw in him a kindred spirit, he didn’t mind his own company. The only thing was, he was occasionally a bit aggressive, a bit lary, got on the wrong side of the law one too many times. Misunderstood, was Downtown Tom. Nobody knew nor cared what he had seen, what he had lived through, all those countless Thanksgivings, no, he was just ‘a wild turkey’ and a ‘nuisance’. There was the case where someone called the cops on him because he was ‘surrounding their car’ and they couldn’t get out. Sure, he was a menace, but those streets are mean when you’re a turkey, doing it on your own. But like the Artful Dodger, they couldn’t catch him, they couldn’t bring him in front of the beak, as it were. He outsmarted them every time. When the Animal Control people would come after him they would manage to chase him out of downtown, but turkeys are hard to catch and he would always come back. Oh he was a sly one, old Downtown Tom, a comic book villain. In January, however, the threat of Downtown Tom was finally lifted, his reign of terror come to an ignominious end with a Moe Green Special (probably). It was less the Wild West, more Leon The Professional. A ‘contractor’ was hired by the city to take him out, and execute him they did, at night, in his sleep where he roosted, with a rifle. Not, as my city-dwelling London friends would believe, in broad daylight with bare hands and a boiling pot on the stove. Maybe it went down differently? Maybe it was like Jules Winfield, reading a passage from the Bible before laying down vengeance upon him. (“Say Gobble again! Say Gobble one more goddamn time!”) No, in the end Downtown Tom went quietly, his passing kept a secret from us for six months until now. (“Codswallop I say. Nope, I reckon he’s still out there, too tired to carry on.”) I guess they had to do what they had to do. This town wasn’t big enough for etc and so on. He’s gone to his gravy. Anyway, this was his manor, around 4th and F Streets. Tom may be gone but they say his ghost still lives on (they don’t say that, by the way), and if you listen carefully at night, you may hear a gobbling (no, that’s just people eating late night burgers at Jack-in-the-Box), and you better watch out, or Downtown Tom will get you (he won’t, he is really dead).