Wednesday, November 6, 2013

November Post / Thanksgiving Time

Well we have been in school since September and the days are starting to get colder and longer. It won't be long and we will be getting ready for Thanksgiving.

If you think that we will be going to the store to get our turkey this year think again. This is just a small town and in the 1950's and 1960's our grocery stores didn't have Turkeys for sale for the holidays. We went to the local farmer or farmer's wife and bought our turkey. It would be fresh and she would catch it and dress it out while we waited.

This is some experience as a child to see. She would catch the turkey and chop off it's head and then she would clean out its insides and save the gizzards and liver and the neck bones and wrap them in newspaper.
She would pluck the feathers off of the bird and then she would wash the bird inside and out and then wrap it up for us to carry home.

Mom would clean out a spot in the refrigerator to put the bird so that it would stay cool until she was ready to cook it. She would cook the pies and make the cornbread for the dressing and on Thanksgiving day she would get up early to get everything into the oven to cook for our afternoon dinner.

For some reason I could never eat any turkey, but I ate plenty of the side dishes and desserts. It seemed that everything that my mother cooked was almost well done. She either forgot that it was in the oven or her mind was on something other than her cooking.

All of the family got together and ate with us and after the meal was over they went and rested and we kids got stuck with the cleaning up. Who was it that messed up all of these pots and pans?

Palmer Waters