The Times

Hurray for Thanksgiving Day

Just when things were getting out of hand, Grandmother came out on the back porch . . . "Dinner's ready to put on the table— come on, every last one of you!" BY HAL BORLAND And special blessings on the youngest and hungriest around the table—they make the day WHEN I sit down this November 24th to the feast my long-line Yankee wife will prepare, I shall be thankful for even more than hearth and home, food and family. As the blessing is said, I shall include particular thanks for childhood memories of Thanksgiving, and maybe it is time to come right out and say that this peculiarly festive and American holiday has always been a family occasion and that, one way or another, the children have made it memorable. It seems to me we should be thankful for that. My own memories of the day reach back to a Nebraska childhood. The Midwest was largely settled by people of a New England strain, so New England's Thanksgiving traditions persisted, though they were somewhat altered by regional differences. We had no oysters for one thing, and no Indian pudding—field corn was hog feed, not holiday fare. Midwesterners preferred pie to plum pudding. And yellow turnip, rutabaga, never had a place on any festive table. But there was turkey in plenty, and savory stuffing and rich gravy and mashed potatoes, often creamed onions, usually creamed corn and "put up" peas, sometimes squash. Always there was pie, both pumpkin and mince. There was, in a word, feasting. One of my earliest memories is based on a song that we sang in school. The words of that song, I subsequently learned, were written by a Massachusetts lady more famed in her day for writing Civil War tracts than for her moral tales and poems for children. Her name was Lydia Maria Francis Child, and the first verse of the song went: Over the river and through the wood, To Grandfather's house we go; The horse knows the way To carry the sleigh Through the white and drifted snow. And it ended, "Hurray for Thanksgiving Day!" I can still hear that schoolroom full of second-graders singing those words in their barnyard-hen voices, and I remember wondering how come, and where, there was enough white and drifted snow for a sleigh ride on Thanksgiving Day. Where I lived there seldom was enough snow for a good snowball fight on Thanksgiving. But, snow or not, we did go to Grandfather's house for Thanksgiving. He had quit the farm by the time I am remembering and had moved to a few acres at the edge of a small town, but the farm tradition persisted. He kept his favorite team of horses and a couple of milk cows, and he grew almost all the basic food for the diminished family, of which only three children still remained at home. He kept his hand in with such enduring matters as the soil and the elements. In season, he did his own butchering, usually a hog or two he had fattened through the summer and a yearling steer he had fed along with the milk cows and perhaps "finished off" with an extra diet of corn for a couple of months. Grandfather always smelled somewhat of horses, a pleasant odor that even in memory reminds me of hay and oats and spring plowing. GRANDMOTHER, in the tradition of all farm women of her day, supervised the garden and the chickens as well as the house. She canned and pickled and preserved and amply stocked her pantry and her outside root cellar, which she called "the cave." She gathered eggs from her flock. She set her broody hens, usually with at least one clutch of duck and goose eggs bartered from some neighbor, and always with at least one clutch of turkey eggs. The poults were hard to raise, but she wouldn't think of buying a turkey for Thanksgiving. She raised hers. She set the milk in crocks for the cream to rise, and she made her own butter. The house itself was small, a one-story white house with a big back porch, a big farm kitchen, a living room and three bedrooms. When the clan gathered there were from twenty-five to [?]ty people, depending on how many babies had been born during the year, but somehow we all got in. Thanksgiving morning was wonderful. By ten o'clock everyone had come, the house was jumping, and the yard was full of kids. And well before noon the whole area smelled of Thanksgiving—roasting turkey, boiling onions, simmering cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, mince pie. The big kitchen was full of women and family gossip [?] he living room of men and man-talk and laughter. And something memorable always happened. One year when Aunt Amy brought two huge cakes, someone hid them under the bed in Grandmother's bedroom. I have no idea why they were hidden there, but one small cousin, who had to look into every nook and cranny, found them. He and I did what any of the small fry would have done on Thanksgiving and at Grandmother's house, white and drifted snow or no snow at all. Our guilt was plastered all over our innocent little faces, chocolate icing on mine, white icing with strands of cocoanut on his. We got walloped, of course, and all the other small cousins were delighted. We were too sore to sit when the food finally came to the table, but it didn't matter. I wasn't very hungry. I managed one helping of turkey, a heap of stuffing, one mound of mashed potatoes swimming in gravy, a few creamed onions and half a dill pickle. That's all. I had to leave the table before it was time for pie, and I was sick as a dog. I got no sympathy at all, even from my own mother. Half an hour later, recovering with that remarkable vitality of the young, I was all ready to eat my dinner and do justice to it. But it was too late. Thanksgiving dinner was over. Aunt Eva, bless her, took pity on me. She had no children of her own and was softhe[?]ed. She took me secretly to the kitchen and offered me anything I wanted. I chose a big piece of mince pie, ate it, and was completely cured. 10 Suburbia Today, November 1960