by Geraldine Duncann
Thanksgiving was very special to me when I was little because it was one of the times I got to see my four cousins, and my aunts, uncles, and grandmother. They all lived in the Los Angeles area and we lived at Lake Elsinore on a commercial poultry ranch. This was during WWII and rationing so of course holidays were at our place because with a farm we had lots of stuff urban people couldn’t get.
The L.A. famly members would save their gas ration stamps so they could make the drive down to Elsinore.
Thanksgiving began days, hell, weeks ahead of time. Well actually, when you live on a farm you are preparing foodstuffs all year long.
In the summer my dad dried apricots and my mom was canning fruit and veggies. In the autumn my dad harvested and dried the walnuts which hung in net bags from the ceiling of the big service porch off the back of the kitchen. And that’s where all the canning was stored – all along one wall on floor to ceiling shelves. AND there were the big crocks of my dad’s cured olives which most years were ready just in time for Thanksgiving. We had to buy apples. Southern California is not apple country, but we had citrus up the wazoo!
Sugar was rationed but my mom made most everything with honey which we got from the honey man who was local. The honey man and my dad would commiserate on how “a woman can throw out with a teaspoon more than a man can bring in with a shovel.” When my dad came in the house, mom would yell at him for it.
So, the day before my mom began making the pies, persimmon pudding, breads, the stuffing and the cranberry sauce. We of course had to buy the cranberries but she made all sorts of other relishes and sauces from our own produce.
On Thanksgiving morning my dad would butcher a huge turkey and several chickens and rabbits. The turkeys were for dinner. The chickens and rabbits were for the L.A. family members to take home with them, along with a lot of eggs, and cottage cheese, and cream. We had a cow.
After the critters were butchered, which I loved to help with, I would run up our long driveway to the road to see if my cousins and grandmother were coming yet. I would sit on the fence and scrutinize every car for what seemed like hours. Then I would run back to the house to watch and smell what my mom was doing in the kitchen, then run back up to the highway, then back to the kitchen and eat some of the gizzards my mom had boiled to make the stock for soup and gravy, then run into my room to see just which of my toys would be best to play with when my cousins were here and put them in a row on my bed, then run up to the highway to watch again, then back to the kitchen, hopeful for some fallout, then help my dad feed all the critters, then back to the highway, then tell my pony my cousins would want to ride her, then run into the kitchen and tell my mom they must have been in an accident or something because they weren’t there yet. My mom would assure me that they were O.K. that was only 10 in the morning and they wouldn’t be here until late afternoon.
The turkeys were now in the oven and the kitchen was beginning to smell wonderful and I would be driving my mom nuts so she would set me to cracking nuts which occupied me for a while until I ran up to the highway again to watch. And so the day passed in a mixture of excitement and agony. What if they really were in an accident? What if they decided not to come? Oh dear! What if Uncle Howard forgot to bring the salmon. Uncle Howard was an avid sports fisherman and he always brought a big salmon he would have caught for us to have the day after Thanksgiving. This was a real treat for us.
Finally the cars with the cousins and my grandmother came down the driveway and I would run alongside, down the drive to where they parked, and I was always upset because instead of immediately wanting to ride my pony or see the new litter of kittens or pet the cow, the cousins all ran into the bathroom as fast as they could. It was a long drive from L.A. to Elsinore. But finally we got to play for a couple of hours before dinner was served.
We all sat at the BIG table in the dining room and I remember the colors: My mom, who had always wanted to be an artist always decorated the table with autumn leaves and Toyon berries, and in the middle were the turkeys, all golden brown and surrounded by some of the dried apricots which had been poached. Her big cut glass bowl was full of the garnet colored cranberry sauce, there were glass bowls of pickles of all colors and her beautiful canned fruit, and goblets filled with beautiful red cranberry juice. Well, mine, my cousins, and my grandmother’s were filled with cranberry juice and my grandmother thought all of them were. She was a tea-totaling fundamentalist. As far as she new, no one drank evil wine.
Now, there were 5 of us cousins and we each got a drumstick. It never occurred to us to wonder how that happened. Well, my mom was clever. Of course all kids want a drumstick. But 5 kids and 2 drumsticks can present a problem. Well, Anne and I, the oldest each got a true drumstick. The next two oldest each got the large joints of the wings and the youngest, who was way too young to notice, got a thigh bone with a little meat left on it. None of us noticed or ever questioned this phenomenon and we were all very happy.
AND THEN THERE WAS PIE! And someone would turn on the radio so we could listen to FDR’s Thanksgiving Day message, and after that my cousins and I would sit while my grandmother read to us and my aunts, uncles, and parents took more “cranberry juice” and sat around the radio listening to the war news.
And that was my Thanksgiving in the early 1940’s
