Thanksgiving

The wonderful holiday of Thanksgiving arrived just in time to save us wretched McGill urchins from the forced attendance at the local school gulag. We made it through September and October, thanks to pine nuts, football and hunting. We were at our wits end that wonderful Wednesday, when we were let out an hour early for Thanksgiving vacation.

Adding to our enjoyment, was the realization that in less than 30 days we would be eligible for another parole for Christmas vacation.

The only drawback to our euphoria was the knowledge that for the next few weeks we had to be perfect angels so that Santa would bring us lots of stuff. We had to do our homework with a smile, be nice to girls and do our chores (for the new generation, that would be getting in the coal and wood for the stoves, shoveling snow etc.)
Santa would always show up at the annual Christmas party at the IOOF Hall the Saturday after Thanksgiving and we had to be ready. We practiced telling Santa that we really wanted a train set but we would rather have our sister get some nice dolls. We were using psychology. I don’t think that it ever worked, but each year we thought it would.

Santa usually rolled his eyes from side to side.

Upon getting out of school early Wed., we raced home and asked if we could help in anyway. After doing the chores we headed for the sleigh riding street for some fun. We made it a point to do as many runs as possible and ran back up the hill instead of walking. The idea was to burn off some fat and make room for turkey and dessert. We didn’t eat much dinner or breakfast.

Mom cooked the turkey in her yellow GE electric roaster. I think it works better than a stove oven. She also made wonderful potato dinner rolls. With the turkey in the roaster, she had the oven for the rolls and pies. The pumpkin pie was made from our Halloween pumpkins. The taste was so much better than the canned pumpkin filling of today. It was like the difference between a ‘store’ tomato and a fresh one from the garden.

When we were called to dinner, we showed up proto and with a freshly scrubbed face, hands and ears. We didn’t take a chance on being sent back to do some more washing.

We were starving and soon had bellies full of good food.

No matter how full our bellies were, we always had plenty of room for pumpkin pie and ice cream from the McGill dairy.

After dinner, we adjourned to the living room and pumped our over stuffed bodies on the floor in front of the wood stove, but not too close. Mom and Dad sat on the couch and Dad turned on the big Zenith radio across the room. We stared at the little green light at the bottom of the large dial face. The light would change form indicating the strength of the radio signal.

It didn’t take long before the turkey and pies put my brother Paul and myself to have a hard time keeping our heads upright.
Then it was off to bed and dreamland. We didn’t dream about sugar plums. We concentrated on Pumpkin pie and ice cream.
Here is the Zenith radio. We thought it was the greatest thing ever made.