Oven for firing glass heats up turkeys on Thanksgiving for Nickelsville

While some were using their smartphone to shop under the table during Thanksgiving, a local artist was busy cooking 10 20-pound turkeys for the people of Nickelsville.

When rains flooded parts of Western Washington, including the homeless campsite known as Nickelsville, Ron & Don asked the nation to help out – and they did.

Donating supplies that for much of the camp’s residents were destroyed by the rising water, many people were able to to sleep in a dry sleeping back after the excess water was pumped out of the camp.

But with Thanksgiving just around the corner, glass artist Scott Chambers put his oven to use.

“Every year I cook my thanksgiving meal in my shop, so I knew I could do this.”

As Ron & Don speculated an oven that runs at 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit produces a pretty dry turkey. That wasn’t the treatment these birds got on Thanksgiving.

Chambers used his glass and kneeling oven. “It’s a big electric-controlled box and when we’re done blowing, at the end of the day it slowly cools it down,” explained Chambers. “I can set it at 328 degrees and cook for days if I want to.”

And he did: he cooked the 10 turkeys along with 50 pounds of potatoes donated by Safeway.

Family, friends and Chambers’ neighbors chipped in for the turkeys. He cooked everything up on Thanksgiving morning, promising the people of Nickelsville he would arrive at 2 p.m. with dinner.

At 1:55 p.m. they showed up with the hot meal and with the help of his family they dropped it off. By 2:15 p.m. they were back home, eating their own Thanksgiving dinner.

“It was about providing a hot meal to these folks,” said Chambers. “It was great time. It was very satisfying.”

No good deed goes unpunished, however. While he was at Safeway getting the food, he parked along the side of the building. It was the firezone, but he didn’t realize that until he came out of the store and found the $50 parking ticket on his windshield.

Ron & Don said they’d take care of the ticket.