Turkey Tales

Thanksgiving is (finally) here! Check out our fun tales of tradition and trickery as ND&P shares what we like to do on Turkey Day. For a more analytical breakdown, take a look at Thanksgiving 2011: By the Numbers.

Thanksgiving is a very important holiday for me. My Grandmother and my Great Grandmother tasked me with keeping the family together. Every year, it is hard having dinner without them, but I know that they are smiling down on me as I attempt to cook dinner for my family. As my Grandma, AKA Mama Joe used to say, “Cook and they will come.” So again this year, I plan to have anywhere from 30-40 people in my house. It’s crowded, but it just brings us all closer together. But watch the elbows as my cousin has been known to bite one that got in his way while eating. Happy Thanksgiving All.

 - Shannon Burnett

I've realized that most of my Thanksgiving stories involve:

• abuse of the elderly (me and my sisters hiding our great aunts' cigarettes) 
• abuse of children (cheating at hide-and-seek with my much, much younger cousins--I'd go inside while they were looking for me.)

  -Jason Anderson

One year a friend of mine wrapped a turkey in a blue blanket to keep it warm on the way to Thanksgiving. The turkey was warm - but covered in blue fuzz. So she had to "defuzz" it before serving!

 - Betsy Parkins

I remember one year when the dressing was forgotten in the oven and it burnt before it could be rescued. However, it’s second only to the turkey at our holiday (very old family recipe), so it didn’t really faze anyone. We all cut off the burnt bits and enjoyed it anyway!

 -Shaun-Amanda Herrmann

My favorite thing to do on Thanksgiving Day is the Turkey Trot – a 10k run through the University of Richmond area!

  -Susan Dubuque

15 years ago was a Thanksgiving to remember. You may not even remember that year, but we know it as the day the turkey bowl attacked my father.

It started off as a drama-free delicious meal. After, my grandmother and mom were doing dishes in the kitchen talking up a storm. My dad decided to let the tryptophan from the turkey take over and plopped down for a nap on the couch. That couch was directly below the cut-out in the wall to the kitchen with a countertop looming over his sleepy little head. Mid-nap, the turkey-shaped dish launched off the counter still full of cranberry sauce. (Let me mention the fact that I know the bowl was still full because it was every year. My grandmother made the worst gelatinous cranberry sauce on the planet.) My father shot up off the couch screaming and confused. He had a tiny gash on his forehead that probably did produce a small amount of blood. But, from the cranberry sauce, it looked like a murder scene.

Long story short, he had to go to the ER for stitches. No hard feelings once everyone could laugh about it. I love the humor of my grandmother because she made sure to specifically have that in her will go to my father when she passed away.
-Desiree Pillsbury

I married into a musical family (think Von Traps) - so we'll break out the instruments and song books. It's a veritable band geek festival, and I love it.

 -Dave Peterson

My cousin burnt a hole in the turkey while defrosting it in the microwave. You have no idea how bad burnt turkey can smell. Gross.

  -Janae Johnson

Around 1986, my then-best friend and fellow copywriter Steve Parker and I were at loose ends over Thanksgiving. Bizarrely, we ate two Thanksgiving Day meals together—at the local Waffle House.

Guinness Book of World Records aside,we were certain this “feeding feat” had never previously been, um, achieved.

So, there was that.  

Entertaining ourselves was no problem. University of Tennessee grads, sons of newspaper lifers who’d migrated from journalism into advertising, same age, roughly the same passions—writing, music, movies, books and the fairer gender . . . and fabled Waffle House culture—we shared some common ground.

We both had even worked—at different times—with Chattanooga native Steve Holland, then with UPI in Paris, soon to be Reuters’ White House correspondent.

Far from hearth and home, we scarcely felt deprived. Amidst shouting waitresses—“egg plate over, scattered, smothered covered, dry raisin, sausage!!”—the din of truckers, travelers and random wayward souls eating, commiserating and feeding the jukebox, we hashed over almost everything. The meaning of life; the soulful Baltimore brilliance of Barry Levinson’s Diner; the still-perplexing machinations behind Bubble Puppy’s 1968  hit, “Hot Smoke & Sassafras.”

And we disassembled and re-assembled our long languishing screenplay: “The Man Who Would Beijing.”

Charlene shouted: “Hash browns—all the way—scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, capped and topped!!!”+

That was the topper we’d been waiting for.

+ Recently added hash brown option: “Country”—that’s with sausage gravy. For those scoring at home, that brings Da House’s hash brown accouterment options to, um, eight.  
  -Doug Cook