On Thanksgiving Eve

When I was eight or nine, my family moved from a little town in western Michigan to Detroit. In Hastings, the town where my mother grew up, we lived in a house my dad built across the school playground from my grandmother’s house. It was a great house and a wonderful town, and we were all happy there except my dad who wanted to own a Ben Franklin store and the only one he could buy was in Detroit. After we moved, every trip back to Hastings, especially the Thanksgiving trip, was a weird stew of grieving, worship, and reading the Ripley’s Believe It or Not paperback my grandmother had on her bookshelf. Here’s my description of my mother preparing the Thanksgiving turkey for the three-hour drive from Detroit back to the holy land, probably around 1958 or so.

How to Transport a Thanksgiving Turkey (originally published on Dead Housekeeping)

Start by buying a bigger bird than you think you need. It will be frozen solid so don’t wait until the last minute like last year. On Thanksgiving Day, get up at 4:00 a.m. In a dark house with a single kitchen light burning, make stuffing by tearing two loaves of Wonder Bread into little pieces. Add onions and a lot of sage. 

Wash the bird and study the skin for pinfeathers. Pull them out with a paring knife until you can run your hands over the bird’s skin and not feel a single feather. Pack the turkey with stuffing and put it in the oven. Turn off the kitchen light and go back to bed. At 9:00 a.m., when everyone is awake and dressed for Thanksgiving, take the midnight blue roasting pan with the nearly done turkey out of the oven and set it on top of the stove. Put the lid on the roasting pan. Wrap the lidded roasting pan in a dozen layers of the Detroit Free Press and tie with twine. Call one of your children to put their finger on the knots so they are tied nice and tight. Place the wrapped roasting pan on more layers of newspaper in the trunk of the car.

Ride three hours in the blue and white Chevrolet your husband is driving. Listen to your kids in the backseat counting telephone poles and reading Burma-Shave signs. Worry a little that you didn’t buy a big enough bird. Doze off with the smell of roasted turkey heating the car and wake up in your mother’s driveway. See that your brothers are already there and know they are having cocktails and joking in the kitchen. Put the turkey in your mother’s oven and then look for the yellow baster you left in the drawer last year.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks! May you buy a big enough bird and roast it just right. Safe travels – in all ways.