Memories

Thanksgiving Memories | Remembering Thanksgiving Stories

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The warm hospitality of a complete stranger.  “The year was 1976. My company in Ohio had just transferred me to their office located in New Mexico. I was to start the Monday after Thanksgiving. I had never been west of the Mississippi, I was single and I knew no one in New Mexico.  Prior to my leaving, a future co-worker engaged me in a conversation and asked that I call him when I arrived in Albuquerque.  I pulled into Albuquerque about 9:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day and called him at home. I apologized for the intrusion on the holiday. He directed me to the motel where I was to stay until my belongings came."

"I fully expected him to wish me well until the office the next Monday. However, he invited me to join his family for Thanksgiving dinner. I took him up on his offer and enjoyed a nice dinner with his wife, daughter and twin baby boys. My most memorable moment of that day was him holding one of his twin boys and comforting him as he was a bit fussy.  I cannot remember what food was served, topics of conversation, decorations or how everyone was dressed. What follows me through the years is the warm hospitality given a complete stranger, alone in a new place. It demonstrated to me the generosity of the Albuquerque citizenry to welcome someone to the community.”  (1)

— Larry Hart
Schenectady, New York

A little boy helping Grandma stuff the turkey.  “Grandmother Annabel is in the process of stuffing the turkey, adding the traditional seasoned bread stuffing, well-celeried, to the big bird.  David, with all the intensity of a 5-year-old, is watching, and asking, ‘What are you doing, Grandma?’ ‘I'm stuffing the bird,’ [she informed him].  Later, David approaches the refrigerator where Big Bird is stored temporarily.  He has a piece of bread in his hand.  As he approaches the turkey, he holds out his hand and says, ‘Here, turkey. Eat!’” (1) 

'On Thanksgiving Day, the captain and I and one nurse were the only ones at the captain's table. Everybody else was sick. That lasted for about three days.’  When her first Thanksgiving in Japan arrived, Miss MacMillan noticed many improvements as she traveled around the occupied country.  ‘The thing that impressed me was that every Thanksgiving there was a service at every (U.S. military) post, no matter how small,’ she said.  ‘Thanksgiving was sometimes celebrated at a hospital because sometimes it would be the only thing standing. As conditions got better, we got our own chapels. Every effort was made to share our services with the Japanese.’  She said American soldiers never went without turkeys, which were shipped to the country for the big day. ‘There was always a lot . . . it made you glad to be an American.’” (4)

— Theresa MacMillan
Richmond, Virginia

The tale of turkey with a tail.  “It was a perfect Thanksgiving Day ... friends and family gathered 'round ... golden brown turkey ... guests were seated at a beautiful table. But out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving in the kitchen. I did several double takes before I realized what I was seeing.  There was a small furry tail sticking out of the back end of the turkey! We went into the kitchen and, sure enough, here was the brand-new tabby kitten we had adopted earlier in the week, Inside the turkey eating to his hearts' content! He had evidently been there awhile, because when we tried to pull him out, his little belly was SO big and full, we could barely budge him! We were all laughing hysterically and always remember the Thanksgiving that "Dexter" was in the Bird!  Dexter grew up to be a beautiful 30-pound, double-pawed tabby. We're convinced that, as a kitten, his first Thanksgiving contributed to his extra-good appetite, which he carried with him throughout his life. Dexter was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1987. We smile every Thanksgiving as we look in the kitchen at the turkey on the counter." (5)

Sitting around the campfire on a cattle drive enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with my dad and a crew of hungry cowboys.  “The Thanksgivings of my growing up years were seldom of a sit-down formal dinner, but rather were dependent on the fall cattle drive.  My Dad, Troy H. King, was a lifelong cattleman. His summer pasture land was north of Dolores, Colo., and the winter range near the family home, west of Farmington. For nearly 50 years, he trailed the cattle on the 100-mile drive. The fall cattle drive was a cold hard one for the cowboys, with little sleep and restless cattle.  If the drive could be reached by car, my aunt, and later my step-mother, would prepare a big meal and we would take it to the reservation and eat with the men on Thanksgiving. The memory of my dad and the cowboys sitting on the ground around the campfire, eating their Thanksgiving dinner from a granite plate, remains with me.  In the next several days, some of the cattle would be brought onto the home place and the spring calves would be weaned from their mothers and branded. There was a lot of bawling, but it was a good sound to us, for the cattle and the men were safely home. (1)

Having Thanksgiving dinner with world famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh.  “Shortly after World War II, Walter W. Ott of Osyka, Miss., found himself commanding a group of U.S. servicemen in England who were maintaining airplanes for the 1948 Berlin Airlift. When famed aviator Charles Lindbergh arrived on Thanksgiving Day to boost morale, Ott planned to share a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with him. But when pressing business delayed Ott for three hours, he directed Lindbergh to the mess hall, certain that he had missed an opportunity to dine with his childhood hero.  Ott finally arrived at the mess hall, "expecting to get a Spam sandwich. But there, waiting for me, was Col. Lindbergh, who had explained to the cook my delay and arranged for me to have an American Thanksgiving dinner after all. This was a very happy moment for me to be able to have dinner and visit with my childhood idol, Charles A. Lindbergh," Ott wrote. "This was my best Thanksgiving."  (6)