When I was a child, we lived in a small three bedroom brick house in a rural area. The house had a one-car garage on its end with a overhead door on the front side and a 3070 door on the back side. In those days, everyone on my mom's side of the family got together to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.
One Thanksgiving, my great-grandmother and grandfather came to our house the night before Thanksgiving and spent the night with us. Even then, they had already began to show their old age. My grandmother was a big believer in "fresh" foods. Every time that we ever ate lunch with her, we had fresh vegetables from her garden, fresh chicken from her backyard, fresh rabbit out of the pen, or anything else. It was always fresh.
On this Thanksgiving eve, she and granddad showed up at our house with a fresh turkey. So fresh that it was still alive. They drove about 75 miles with that turkey in the car with them. When they arrived at our house, the turkey was put in our garage. The garage was used more for storage of our junk instead of our cars.
On Thanksgiving Day, my grandmother was going to kill this turkey and prepare it for our meal. I will never forget hearing all of the noise bright and early that morning. I got out of bed to go see what was wrong, and found everyone in my family gathered at our back sliding glass doors. When I got close enough to see what everyone was staring at, a permanent picture was etched into my mind: my old grandmother, with her hair balled on top of her head (it was against her religion to cut it) had a hatchet in one hand and was shaking the fist of her other hand, as she was chasing that turkey across our back yard. I do not know if it broke free of her grasp as she was trying to kill it, or if maybe she opened the 3070 door to take a look at it and it bolted out of the door. How it occurred has slipped my memory, but I will never forget that picture. If I get a chance, I will check with my parents and see if they can remind me of how it happened and follow up with another post.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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