Thanksgiving with the in-laws

Grandma W loved being with her family. Thanksgiving and Christmas were huge events on her calendar. She started her preparations in a week in advance of Thanksgiving. Grandma baked bread for her stuffing and then crumbled it in a huge bowl to dry. She baked her butternut squash that she raised in her garden in preparation for pie. The only fly in her ointment of unrestrained enjoyment of family time was Grandpa.



Grandma and Grandpa married during their thirtieth year. She imminently went into to production mode. In ten years time she had produced 8 children, 4 boys and 4 girls.. Grandpa had bought the family farm from his mother, but with a large brood of children to provide for, income from the farm had proved insufficient. He took a job at the Nevada Test Site 3 hours away from home. He stayed at the test site during the week and farmed on the week-ends. For Grandpa the 4 day week-end was a great opportunity to catch up the farm work. Especially with his 4 boys there to help him. Grandma thought Grandpa ought to stay in the house Thanksgiving day and enjoy the company but Grandpa preferred to spend his time on the farm during the daylight.



Grandma's stratagem was to announce that Thanksgiving dinner would be at 1 pm. By the time the men folks had eaten, there would be no day light left to return to the field. The difficulty with this stratagem was that Grandma found it difficult to have Thanksgiving dinner ready by 1 pm. By the time I joined the family Grandma had trained all the men folk to ignore the 1 pm time and show up at dark for Thanksgiving dinner. As the family increased through marriage and the addition of 30 odd grand children Thanksgiving at Grandma became a challenge to the daughters-in-law. The horde of little people didn't understand why they had to wait for 4 hours to be fed. I lived 3 blocks down the street, so when my children were small I fed them lunch before we went to Grandma's house. As they got older they were out in the fields with their father or playing with their cousins so lunch wasn't as critical.

Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's was worth the wait. There was turkey and stuffing, ham, green beans, corn, green salad, fruit salad, mashed potatoes and gallons of gravy. For dessert there were pies of apple, cherry. squash, pumpkin, banana cream, and coconut cream. If you didn't leave the table as stuffed as the turkey it was your own fault.

Grandma didn't do all the cooking herself. As the family extended, we started bringing different dinner components according to our culinary talents. As a native Idahoan I detest instant mashed potatoes. I took over bringing the mashed potatoes and making the gravy. Gravy wasn't one of Grandma's culinary strengths. Various other daughters and daughters-in-law brought pies, salads and rolls. After dinner and cleanup the fun began. There were movies and games much visiting and story telling. Great time was had by all.

Grandma left us in 2007. Now Grandpa commutes to Thanksgiving dinner. It is easier for him to travel to his children. All that it is left now are a trail of memories.