Once upon a time, when Papa was just a little boy,
Thanksgiving was always held at Grandpa and Grandma Medvee's house, up on the hill just about half a mile from the big Quartz Hill water tank, and the whole family was always sure to turn out, many times Mama's cousins were there Donny and Raymond, and sometimes Uncle Julius himself, and every now and then a crazy Hungarian named Lazlo who sometimes showed up in a black suit twenty years out of date, or a cowboy hat and tall cowboy boots. The regulars were Uncle Bob and Aunt Janey (Mama's sister) with Cousin Cherie (and when Dougie was twelve years old Robbie was born, and so became a regular, and he got the Hungarian good looks, and horded them until MUCH laster Harrison was born and stole some of the glory). In the early years Aunt Linda lived with Grandma and Grandpa, a rebellious and high-spirited teenager who loved horses, and later she would have the beautiful Shannon, a blond princess of a child that all the family adored, and practically grew up at Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Often 20 assorted adults and children were pushing through the mid-sized house, laughing and arguing, all very noisily, everyone gushing and near fainting at the banquet of delicacies that Grandma made every year. In the early years Grandma made all of the feast, but as time passed Mama would bring a dish or two, Janie would bring a dish and a pie, and Linda began bringing pies that were almost as good as Grandma's.Dougie always wanted to skip everything and go straight to the polachinta (this is just a phonetic spelling, how it sounded when Grandma said it), a Hungarian dessert that can hardly be described. Think crepes, but thinner and slipperier, a tad greasy, lightly browned and sweet, with a spread of cottage cheese and crushed walnuts inside, or other varieties with fruit preserves, and exotic fare. But Dougie's favorite was polachinta with grape jam, Grandma would make ten of them for his pleasure, and often would slip him two or three BEFORE the big feast. You had to be careful, or the jam would come gushing out the other end when you bit into it, so the secret was to tilt up the back end when you bit the front end. The thing melted in your mouth.At the center of the table was always a gigantic golden-blazed turkey with bulbous drumsticks that might very well have taken an Olympic gold medal in any even it was entered (and this AFTER it was dead, I'm not sure how they ever caught the poor bird). Seeing the turkey, Dada (a vegetarian) could be relied upon to make a sarcastic remark, such as: "You know, if you give up meat, you'll live a lot longer!" After years of the practice, everyone knew to ignore the sage advice, although some such as Aunt Janie would provide a theatrical roll of the eyes.All the traditional fare was always there, around the turkey, or lined up on the faux-marble bar next to the table, including cranberry sauce (a lot of it) with actual cranberries poking through the sauce, corn on the cob, thick real mashed potatoes, two kinds of globulated gravy (one vegetarian, the larger one for the carnivorous), and unusual things such as Hungarian goulash and often a vegetarian version, kidney bean roast (another one of Dougie's favorites) which was a vegetarian dish made out of kidney beans with cheese on top (there must have been more to it than that, but Dougie was never a chef in the making), a huge tossed salad (probably made in a punch bowl), candied yams, what used to be called a "fruit salad" comprised of fruit cocktail and marshmallows, and if I continued listing everything I would produce a tome the size of an unabridged dictionary.And usually spread out in the kitchen were Grandma's pies, a fancy pie with this whipped kind of white and beige waves of stiff SOMEthing going on that Dougie never knew what it was called and he never liked it much, and depending on the year often there were blueberry pies, blackberry pies, the very occasional key lime pie, a beloved cherry pie that was always gone before Dougie could get a piece, and always a pumpkin pie (Dougie's favorite) and always several of Grandma's famous apple pies (sometimes she made a pie of very sour green apples, and that almost beat out the pumpkin pie for Dougie). Occasionally there was a cake, or two, but generally for Thanksgiving everyone applauded pies the loudest (except for the polachinta, of course, everyone loved that the most, but the trouble is that one person could easily decimate the entire stock before another person knew what was going on, so the trick was to stuff everyone with the Thanksgiving feast, then too much pie, and only THEN bring out the polachinta.The children were relegated to two card tables put together in the living room, so that their respective parents could yell at them to stop arguing or fighting when necessary (and it was always necessary), and the dining room table always had three extra leafs inserted in the middle to make room for everyone (and making it an exceptionally long table, what appeared at least thirty-two feet in Dougie's estimation). Grandpa always sat at the head of the table and he would always say: "Let us ask God to bless this food."Every head would bow and Grandpa would say a relatively short, and to-the-point prayer. The prayer, from distant memory, sounded something like: "Lord, we give Thee thanks for these blessings, and we ask Thee now to bless this food, and bless everyone present, especially the children. We love thee Lord and ask Thee to come quickly, Lord Jesus. In Thy Name, Christ Jesus, we pray, amen.""Amen," everyone would agree.What followed was helter skelter, or friendly chaos, as everyone dove for what they wanted most, and Grandpa started passing plates around. Very often, and very unfairly, Dougie received a drumstick from the fantastic turkey, even though there were only two (it has always been rumored, even from earliest of times, that scientists, somewhere, are busily working to develop a six-legged turkey, to make the dispersal of drumsticks a little more fair at Thanksgiving), and it wasn't fair, but somehow he did end up with a drumstick. He generally asked for BOTH drumsticks, but that never occurred as being a favored grandson extends only so far. Grandma would bring the children their plates, heaping a little too high with succulent fare and the children were already making fun of each other, or boasting who would eat more, or who was the biggest pig, and someone from the big table would usually call, cheerfully: "Would you kids just shut up?" To which Dada would invariably contribute: "Kids should be seen and not heard."Papa remembers these bygone feasts, now, during contemporary gatherings, which usually total no more than eight family members, but generally six or seven, and nobody present today from those early wondrous events. As he seasons and bastes the family Tofurky (which tastes every bit as delicious as the real turkey from days long ago, but alas, admittedly, looks rather silly), but in contrast to that majestic slain bird of old absurdly looks like a big cube of butter, and although the fare is there, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce with real cranberries poking from the sauce, the Tofurky (which looks much more appetizing when sliced), and many other things besides, it is hardly an echo of those glorious Grandma Medvee Thanksgivings of yesterday.Thanksgiving ended, pretty much when Grandpa Medvee died, although the gathering began to subside much earlier as each child moved farther and farther away, even though to greater part, Grandma Medvee was always the shining star of Thanksgiving.Thank God for Grandma Medvee!All Stories © 2009 Douglas Christian Larsen
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