Little Thanksgiving Stories

In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme I just started, I thought bout two stories of festive dinners that happened to my first wife and myself.


The first was her first turkey. We were married just a short while when it came time to cook the first turkey. Unlike my son twenty years later, our turkey was thawed and cooked by my wife to a beautiful golden brown.

We brought it out of the oven, and she prepared to carve the bird. Neither one of us had ever really made a turkey before and as we carved it, something seemed wrong. What was this stuff inside of the turkey? It seemed like a paper bag. It was a paper bag!

I guess no one had ever said to remove the bag with the giblets before cooking.

Later on at Thanksgiving dinner in 1962, during her first pregnancy, the excuse everyone used for the mishap, my wife was charged with carrying the sweet potato casserole her mother had made into the dining room. As luck would have it, the casserole slipped out of her hands and landed, sticky side down, on to the dining room carpeting!

For my favorite story of the day, on December 1, 2010 I posted to this blog:

We drove nine hours on Thursday to get to New Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with my mother-in-law. It was a long trip, and we were tired, but happy to arrive and get a traditional, home cooked, Thanksgiving dinner.

Before we ate, I said, "Let's all say what we're thankful for".

My mother-in-law said, "I know that I'm most thankful for (here she names my sister and brother in law and their two kids).

The chopped liver family (us) sat in stunned silence waiting for the rest of the sentence.

There was none.