Thanksgiving's Past, Thanksgivings Past

Thanksgiving is past. It's the morning after Thanksgiving Day and very laid back. I'm taking care of kaleidoscope girl's two dogs while they are at the Coast. The 3 dogs are maniacs when they're together. I made the mistake of giving them each a chew bone thinking that would be a nice treat. They spent most of last night defending their bones and taunting each other with them. The family left after dinner and hopefully didn't get too tired driving in the rain. It was pouring here. This was my 5th Thanksgiving in Portland. Really hard to believe that time has spun so fast. Kaleidoscope girl and Hapapapa have an "extended family" of friends that have shared Thanksgiving Dinner together for years. I've joined in since I've been here and it's really nice to see the group together each year. Usually the host family makes the turkey and everyone brings something. Stories are that for the first few years there was no turkey...I'm glad those days have passed!

Thanksgivings Past I was remembering back to past Thanksgivings and there are many that have been really nice, but a couple that cross my mind every year. One was in Chicago. I don't remember a dinner, but I remember a slender nurse on my floor (I was a ward clerk at Billing's Hospital for a season). I probably worked that night and this nurse told stories of her Thanksgiving turkeys and how every year except this one it seemed she was pregnant. She would be in her eighth or nineth month and as big as the turkey itself. Everyone would crack up as she described herself trying to get the turkey in and out of the oven.

Another Thanksgiving that crosses my mind each year is my first one in Over-the-Rhine. I moved there in the spring of 1969 and my official roomate, D.G., had a job split between youth work at Prince of Peace and senior work at the OTR Senior Center which was located on the corner of 13th and Race St. across from Washington Park at the time. I say she was my "official" roomate because there were many people in and out of our apartment that summer. We were the ones who paid the rent. Everyone but me returned to school in the fall, and I was hired by the Senior Center to replace DG. For Thanksgiving, DG decided she wanted to cook dinner for all the little old people who usually came to the center. It would have been closed for the holiday and most all of the people would have been alone.

I had never cooked a turkey or made stuffing or anything like this. DG had taught me how to drive; now she was teaching me how to make the best turkey and stuffing. The turkey was huge. I think we used two or three bags of bread, a pound of butter, and an entire jar of poultry spice making the stuffing. Then it was up every hour through the night to check on it and baste it. The smell of turkey in the morning was wonderful and the dinner was a huge success. And one of the best parts was making the little elderly Italian cook, who was quite a curmudgeon - especially when we helped in the kitchen, sit down and eat without doing a thing! They all loved it.