“My childhood smells like a box of Crayola crayons.”
The morning is windy, raw and cloudy. Sun is only a possibility. The high will be 49°. Today is an inside day. I’ll be an observer looking at the world through my den window.
When I was in the first few years of grammar school, the nuns used to pass out coloring book pages with holiday designs. We’d pull out our crayons and spend an intense afternoon coloring. I remember the turkey. The big part to color was the tail. Not ever having seen a real turkey, I multi-colored the tail feathers. I think the NBC peacock and my turkey were related. My mother always gushed at my masterpiece. She was quite believable. It was refrigerator art.
Thanksgiving is sandwiched between the two big days, Halloween and Christmas. I never counted the days until Thanksgiving. There was nothing surprising about it. My mother was always up really early, like 5 or 6 ish to stuff the turkey and get it in the oven. My sisters and I still wonder why she needed to be up that early. We watched the parade and munched on M&M’s, tangerines and mixed nuts in the shell. The bowl for the nuts was wooden and had silver picks in holes around the edge. The crackers too were silver. I actually found and bought an old bowl just like it. I fill it with mixed nuts more as a decoration and a memory.
When I think back to those Thanksgivings, images jump into my head. I can see my father carving the turkey. He always started with the legs. We had paper turkey napkins and a paper tablecloth with cornucopias. I always thought the table looked special, festive. There was a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and the gravy was in a boat. The boat name made perfect sense to me. It really did have the body of a canoe but one with a spout. Dinner was always around two.
The pies were on the kitchen table. One was always lemon meringue. That was my favorite. My father was an apple pie with cheese fan. I preferred custard pie over pumpkin.
My dance card this week is uke loaded. I have the usual Tuesday night practice and Wednesday morning lesson. There are two concerts. Wednesday is Hyannis and Thursday is Brewster. I’ll have to keep my fingers limber!
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
November 6, 2023 at 3:26 pm
Hi Kat,
Today the sun is shining brightly and the high is forecasted to be 83°. This is what we called in New York as a kid, “Indian Summer”. Today, we might say, “Native American Ummer”. Unfortunately, we didn’t have our first freeze yet. Last week it only got down to 33°. Our average first freeze is on November 22nd. Another date which will live in infamy.
Thanksgiving at our house usually begins with the Macy’s parade, the National Dog Show, and the Dallas Cowboy game. I can’t remember a Thanksgiving Day without the Dallas Cowboys playing football. My mother also prepared the turkey and my father carved it up at the table, just like that Norman Rockwell painting. Neither my wife nor I like turkey and maybe my wife will make a nice brisket. The only part of the turkey I like is the dark meat. Modern Industrial turkeys have no dark meat, they are bread to have very, very, large breasts.
The entire Thanksgiving Holiday is another made up celebration to install phony patriotism onto the masses. It prepares the masses to go out and spend money during the upcoming winter solstice holidays. If retailers don’t have a good December then there is nothing they can do for the entire next year to make up for it in sales. If we don’t have, Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanza, we would have to make it up so that business can survive. 🙂
November 6, 2023 at 4:15 pm
Hi Bob,
Indian Summer is usually only after the first killing frost. We haven’t had a frost here yet. My sister in Colorado is in the middle of Indian Summer now after her one foot+ of snow. She has weather in the 70’s. Our first frost is whenever.
My father watched football, even hurried dinner to get back to the game. He was a Giants fan, no Pats back then. I like turkey from the roast to the soup. My father was the best at stripping the turkey of meat, first for salad and then the rest of the meat and the bones for soup. 90 percent of Americans eat the bird.
The first official Thanksgiving was in 1863 when Lincoln made the proclamation: to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” It wasn’t so much political as religious. Roosevelt tried to change it to encourage retail sales, but there was so much opposition he backed off. I don’t see how it encourages patriotism. I see it as about sharing a special meal with family. The urge to spend is a recent ploy.
November 6, 2023 at 4:48 pm
Now that I give it more thought, you are correct about both the patriotism and Indian summer. We haven’t had our first frost either. The patriotism comes from the football game. 😦
I had an uncle who attended catering school. One of his assignments was to carve the meat off of the turkey skeleton, slice the meat very thinly, and then layer the meat back onto the bird. This allowed the bird to be displayed as if it were whole, and the customers could take slices of the meat directly off the breast and onto their plate.
At work our employee parking lot is
Behind the building. The surrounding area is undeveloped land. Once we had a wind turkey living near the parking lot. The bird didn’t look like the birds found in the grocery store. He or she had the head, neck, and thing under the beak, but the body was very slim and it could move quickly. The feathers were reddish brown.
November 6, 2023 at 5:11 pm
I have seen those carved then reconstructed birds at buffets. That takes quite a talent.
Not too many years ago they reintroduced wild turkeys to the cape, a few pairs. Now they are everywhere. Some show up on my front lawn. I actually saw a hen with her turkey babies crossing the road. I waited and watched. That was the only time I saw turkey chicks. Once in a while I see a single bird but usually they wander in a flock. I counted 14 in one flock. They actually can fly. They used to roost on branches around a tiny pond near my house.
November 6, 2023 at 8:19 pm
Our wild turkey of the parking lot just disappeared one day. He or she was too scrawny for a Thanksgiving table. I’m sure she was probably shot.
November 6, 2023 at 8:21 pm
I forgot that Benjamin Franklin wanted the national symbol bird to be a wild turkey. Unfortunately, the bald Eagle won.
November 6, 2023 at 8:33 pm
Bob,
I remember Franklin singing about the turkey in the musical 1776.
November 6, 2023 at 8:40 pm
Bob, They really are far too scrawny.