Happy turkey day!
Thanksgiving has always been kind of a weird day for me.
I'm the youngest of 7 kids, so I never got to sit at the "big" table.
That still bugs me!
My late uncle Joe was a drinker.
He was a salesman, with pale blue eyes and he told the best jokes.
He would come by early in the day when Mom was preparing the meal.
She would always save the turky neck for him on a paper plate.
He would sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a fork, picking all that stringy meat off the neck.
Most of my memories of any holidays are of Mom scrubbing our floors on her hands and knees and hollering at us not to walk on them.
She made the pies the night before (as I do now) and we were not allowed near them.
My grandparents lived next door and they would come over in time for the big meal.
Earlier in the day I would be sent over to retrieve the big turkey platter my sister Connie got at Autenreith's downtown, it was too big for our cupboards.
We ate on Golden Wheat dishes that Mom had gotten one at a time in boxes of detergent.
We had an appetizer made out of a pear half with a cream cheese ball rolled in walnuts with a cherry on top (yuck)
and I always had to stuff the celery.
I make my kids do that now.
Mom would always save the turkey tail for my grandma to eat, and we were all so grossed out by it.
Mam (my grandma) would slice her prerequisite cranberry circle from the can into precise little squares.
She took forever to eat, and we couldn't dig into the pies until she was finished with her plate.
The rest of the day would be spent washing dishes and sorting out leftovers.
The roaster pan would be carried back over to my grnadparents for Pap to feed the scraps to his coon dogs.
When I grew up turkey day was always an iffy one.
I usually had to deal with a drunk surly husband or some other crisis.
Like the first year here when my oven broke.
I kept wondering what was taking so long and here the damn oven died.
Luckily we had brought our old oven in the move, and my dad hooked it up.
Then one year my water heater died.
I kept wondering why the hot water kept getting colder and sure enough it was the water heater.
We boiled water on the stove to do dishes that year.
Then one year I had my new cell phone on the counter and my son knocked it into the pan of turkey goo.
Not sure what will happen this year.
It's always something!
Love....Jill
