Tales of Thanksgiving

The holiday season always makes me sit and think, especially when I should be working. This time of year always makes me think of several memorable Thanksgivings. The first was back in
the 1961. The whole fam-damly was on a convoy to the farm to have Thanksgiving Dinner with Grandma Jones. There were to many of us to fit into one car, so Mom and Dad, Jenniffer, Peter, and Raymond were in one car, and Sherry, Krista, Jennell and I were in the second car. We were headed along what is now the back-way to the farm, southwest out of OK City, through Binger, and through what we thought then were canyons (we hadn't been out west yet) towards Oney, or Albert, depending on which side of the 4-way stop sign you lived on. We had made it past Binger and were cruising along; as I recall Sherry and Krista were debating about which radio station to listen to. Krista was winning because Sherry was way too safety conscience to think about trying to change the radio station while she was driving. I was leaning forward from the back seat with my arms crossed under my chin on the back of the front seat, no-one even considered safety seat belts back then. When all of the sudden there was great big square thing covering the windshield, then there was a tearing sound, and then it was gone. All of the sudden Sherry is frantically trying to stop the car. Dad's doing the same in front of us, then backing up. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it wasn't going to be good. And Krista says; "Dad's going to be really mad about that." It turns out that when we had stopped at the service station earlier that the hood hadn't been closed properly, the hatch had released and it had flipped open, the sheared its bolts and flipped backwards over the top of the car. Luckily no one was hurt. I don't recall Dad being mad about the loss of the hood. But I do remember Sherry being really shook up for the rest of drive in. The only other thing I remember about that Thanksgiving is that this was the last time I ever had Grandma Jones "Grape Cobbler". She made it from wild grapes that she had picked and canned. It had big chunks of dumplings mixed up in a thick grape sauce with whole grapes floating around it. It was one of my favorite deserts when I was a kid. Funny what you remember about holidays.

The next one that I remember was Thanksgiving of 1963. That was the year that President Kennedy was assassinated. Almost as memorable to our family was that this was the year that the Florida Seminoles had demonstrated and taken over their BIA office in a sit in. These two events will be forever linked in my mind. Naturally all the demonstrators had been arrested and hauled off to jail. Dad had sympathy for them and felt that he should do his part to support them. One evening when he was feeling the benefit of John Barley Corn and not thinking as clearly as one would hope, he decided that the best thing to do in support of his fellow Seminoles was to call President Kennedy speak his piece of mind. Naturally, he was not allowed to speak to the President; but he had managed to vent his ire to whomever it was they had eventually linked him up to. A few days later President Kennedy was assassinated. I was in Social Studies class at John Marshall High School when it happened. History was a telecast block of instruction, a new experiment for OKC schools, and all 8th graders attended the same class in the auditorium, a class of about 300 hundred of us. There was one lead teacher and several assistant teachers that monitored us as we watched the instruction on televisions. I recall the TV going off and the auditorium was dark for a second or two; then the lights came on and Mr. Devaughn was standing on the stage with a microphone. He made the announcement that the president had been assassinated, and then they turned the TV back on, only now to NBC news and we watched developments for a few minutes. By the end of that period the Principal came over the loud speaker and called for a moment of silence; and then school was dismissed for the rest of the day and we were told to to go home and be with our families. On the evening of the next day, after Dad had come home from work, there was a knock on the door. I answered it and standing there were literally two men-in-black, holding their hats in their hands. They asked if Dad was home, and then asked to be allowed in. These men were from the FBI, as a result of the assassination all "anomalies" were being investigated. Dad's stunt the week before had placed him in their radar and now they were there to check out his abilby on the day in question. I don't think I've ever seen the old man so humble, it was a truly sobering event, in that when they left he was sober. The one thing that I remember clearest about it was that Dad did not bad mouth them after they were gone. He had been impressed with their forth right manner, the accuracy and level of detail they had available, and the way they validated events and come to a no-harm conclusion. That year was the first time I saw the "FBI Story" with Jimmy Stewart in the staring role. For a while there my ambition was to become an FBI agent when I grew up.

Next is Thanksgiving eve 1968, Fort Rucker, Alabama. Myself and my fellow classmates in the Door Gunner Training Center had been tagged for KP duty the day befor Thanksgiving. We were just glad that we had dodged the bullet for the next day. In addition to the duties normally associated with KP duty we had been tasked with much of the preparations for Thanksgiving. Included were baking a lot of extra goods and pre-cooking several hams. They wroked us right up to 9 PM that night, and we had gone on shift before 5 AM that morning. The Mess Daddy had fed us our dinner meal just prior to feeding the troops, so we had dinner around 3:30 that afternoon. My partner, Danny Kink, and I started thinking around 7:30 when it became clear that we were not going to get out of there until late. So all of us, there were about 8 of us from our class, each smuggled something out and hid it before we got off shift. After we got off, everyone gathered their goods up and met-up back at the barricks. We had managed to smuggle out a ham, a tray of rolls, butter, a couple of pies, and a two or three gallon box-bag of chocolate milk (milk in plastic bag, inside a box, that was used to fill a milk machine). Once back in the barracks we had our very own, pre-Thanksgiving feast. Once done, we snuck the dirty pans back and stacked them up outside the mess hall where they could be found the next day. The next day being a holiday we were allowed to sleep in. I have to tell you, that was one of the most enjoyable Thanksgiving meals I think I have ever had. A bunch of stinking dirty GI's hunkered down in the back of the barracks enjoying ham sandawiches, pie, and choclate milk as a bed-time snack!

Now move to the early 70's, I don't remember exactly which year it was, but I think it was Thanksgiving of 1974. Leora, little Leora, and I had traveled to Grandma and Grandpa T's for Thanksgiving day. It was about a three hour drive up through Heber and Daniels Canyon, past Strawberry, across Duchene Valley and into Vernal. On this particular Thanksgiving Grandma T had a brand new "Amana Radar Range" microwave oven with a rotating table. It was the newest wonder in kitchen technology and Grandma was just dying to try it out on the holiday bird. Well, she prepared that bird, stuffed it full, greased it down, strapped the legs and wings up tight and wedged that big old bird into the Microwave. I swear, if that bird had been an ounce bigger it never would have made it in the oven and we might have been better off for it. Then she commenced to zap it! Well about an hour later, the recommended time for bird zapping by Amana's user manual, we pulled it out and looked it over. It smelled about right, but it didn't look like any bird we'd ever seen cooked before. In fact, it looked down right RAW. So back in it goes again for another hour. Grandma wasn't concerned because microwave cooking takes less time than conventional roasting, or so the manual says. At the end of the second hour out it comes again for inspection, and its still looks pretty raw. About now Grandma T is getting a little concerned. We still had time, but this just wasn't how it was supposed to go. So back in it goes for hour three, then hour four, and finally hour five. At last this bird is starting to look like a roast turkey is supposed to look. So Grandma hands it over to me and tells me to slice it up while she and the other ladies start putting the rest of the food on the table. I'll never forget it. I took her carving knife and fork in hand and stabbed that big old fork into the bird. I can remember thinking, this feels like a tough old bird. And then I made the first slice, about 1/4 inch thick. As the slice of meat comes off of the bird and gets laid onto the serving tray I noticed that the slice of good breast meat seems a little dry and a little dark. So I make the second slice, and it was tough to cut. As I laid it over onto the serving plate the inner side of this slice is down-right brown in color, I thought, now that's odd. So I made the next slice and here I cut into some true charcoal gumbo. I mean, it wasn't even recognizable as meat. Grandma had zapped that poor old bird into a cinder. We learned right then and there that a microwave oven cooks from the inside out, the closer we got to the core of that bird the worse it got. Sooo, Grandma went down into the cellar and brought up a 5 lb canned ham, and I sliced and micro zapped that real quick and that's what we had for Turkey Dinner! To my knowledge no one in the family has tried cooking a holiday dinner in the microwave since.

Time moves forward and its now the day after Thanksgiving 1983. We had stayed at home that year because the weather forecast was for a terrible snow storm. It started snowing on the evening of Thanksgiving Day and snowed off and on all night long. By the day after Thanksgiving there was already two feet of snow on the ground and it was still a steadily coming down. By the time that storm ended we had well over three feet of snow. I had to shovel snow off the roof after that storm to keep the roof from collapsing. One of the maintenance buildings roofs on post actually did collapse because of the heavy snow. So its the Friday after Thanksgiving and we were house bound. No traffic anywhere that we can see, all is quiet, and white, and cold. The kids were just dying to get out into the snow and play, but Leora and I had kept them in all morning. Around noon I had a brilliant flash. I dug out the Cross-Country Skies for Leora, Rachel and myself and I told Mom to break out the Christmas decorations and to make some Hot Chocolate. Then with Leora and Rachel in tow I took off for the Ace Hardware store in town on Cross Country skies, it was a trip of not much more than six blocks, but less than a mile. When we got to Ace the girls and I picked out a nice 6 foot tree, I bought some rope, and rigged a harness to tow the tree with. And then the girls and I towed that tree back to the house. The wind had picked up while we were gone and it was near blizzard conditions by the time we got home. But there was Mom, Angie, and Hank, waiting for us on the porch, all excited about the snow, a Christmas Tree, Hot Chocolate, and life in general. Now that was a fun day. By the way, the next Monday, after a week end of continual storms, I Cross Country Skied into work, about an 8 mile trip. I was one of a very few people that made it in that day. But I was able to organize the few folks from the Equipment Management Division where I worked that did make it in and we were able to get the Depot roads cleared for folks to come back to work the next day. Then I Cross Country Skied back home. The Base Commander was needless impressed with his new Second Lieutenant.

The next year, at the most the second year after that we were at Grandma and Grandpa T's for Thanksgiving again. While Grandma and Aunt Debi were fixing Thanksgiving Dinner I took Leora and the kids up on the mountain near Flaming Gorge Damn and went Cross Country Skiing. Up on top, just South of the damn there is a great big bowl shaped valley. We parked the truck on the shoulder of the road and skied down into the valley for an afternoon of frolicking in the snow. The snow conditions were just great. After a couple of hours the clouds started gathering, the temperature dropped, and the wind started to pick-up so we decided that the prudent thing to do was to head back. Naturally it was all up hill back to the truck. Rachel had been ill a couple of weeks earlier, and apparently the days outing had been too much for her and she quickly got exhausted on the way back up the mountain. Leora and I talked about the options, and I decided that the easiset, quickest solution was for me to carry Rachel out. So I knelled down, and she climbed up on my back, arms around my neck, with my hands hooked under her knees with her still wearing her skies; and up the mountain we went. That was some trek on cross country skies. It was particularly hard to maintain my balance, and more than once I wrenched my back trying to stay upright on my skies. We finally made it back up to the truck. All of us were pretty well heated up from the work out except Rachel, and she was starting to show signs of hypothermia. We cranked the heat up in the truck and sat her on Leora's Lap and wrapped in a blanket. By the time we got off the mountain she had finally warmed up. But all told, we had a really great day of Cross Country skiing.

Now as we approach yet another Thanksgiving Day, I find myself sitting here smiling as I ponder Thanksgivings past, and wonder, what new adventures this and future Thanksgivings have in store. Here's hoping that no mater where you are, or who you're with, that you've taken the time to gather as many of the family as you can around you, and to enjoy this wonderful holiday. I hope you're all telling your version what ever memories are dear to you, as you are creating new memories for a new generation of family.

(All photo's are from the Flamming Gorge Cross Country Outing: #1 = Leora Nad Angie; #2 = Rachel; #3 = Leora, Angie, Rachel, Marie & Tah-Tey-Ze; #4 = Leora; #5 = Angie)


Happy Thanksgiving!


Dad