JihadGene here with a Thanksgiving memory from the 1960's. As I looked back into my childhood, I had a hard time finding a nice Thanksgiving one. It's kind of hard to have joyful California Thanksgiving memories when your Mom was a devout Jehovah's Witness. Mom was always sitting on "pins and needles" waiting for Armageddon to come. That would be when my Mom's loving Jehovah God would lay waste to all or most of our neighborhood and kill off a few dozen of my best friends in a holy fire of rain and if she (Mom) was lucky, she'd get to see Jehovah open up the ground and swallow up worldly people by the house-load! Hell yeah!!! Yes, Thanksgiving in California 1966...it was a special time I guess. Well, it really was special as we had no school on a Thursday and my Dad was home from work, yelling at us kids as we ran outside, to "Shut the Goddamn door so you won't let any of the Goddamn flies out!" Dad hated flies...it was a thing left over from WWII and his having been a US Marine on Guadalcanal during that time. Our house was located near a Spreckles sugar factory and stockyard in Manteca, California. We had flies and good weather pretty much year round! Dad was always armed with a fly swatter to smack flies with. Mom only packed a swatter to hit us kids with. Dad had malaria but he never cursed the mosquitoes. Like many Marines in that hell hole, Dad eventually contracted malaria and was shipped out to some other island, so I guess that's why he never cursed the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes were his ticket outta Guadalcanal and away from getting bombs dropped down on him from some Mitsubishi (Betty) bombers. Dad hated the very word, Mitsubishi, because of this... yet I never heard him curse a mosquito. Now, back to Thanksgiving! I remember Thanksgiving 1966 for this if nothing else...my Dad bought the most hideous turkey the free world has ever seen! He got it dirt cheap and believe me as a Texas kid raised on a farm during the Depression...cheap meant everything!! Guys like my Dad helped make China and the WalMart's what they are today!!!
"Imagine if you will (sounding like Rod Serling) a Thanksgiving turkey from a fifth dimension, beyond ugly which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as a Butterball. It is the middle ground between light and dark meat, between culinary science and superstition. It is a turkey with the top one 3rd of it's breast/chest area removed as if with a chainsaw. A Doctor Mengele hack job leaving only a hideous gaping hole on top with the legs in their normal upright position. It was the stupidest looking Thanksgiving turkey anyone had ever seen."
I was only a 12 year old boy back then but ...by Jehovah God... I knew f@cking stupid when I saw f@cking stupid!!! Holy shit! Did I tell you my Dad loved stuffing? Why, hell yes he loved stuffing...being as my Mom was the world's worst cook and the only things she could make were beans with cornbread and burned bird with an asbestos stuffing! I won't even talk about her burnt pancakes with the pudding-filled middles. Where was I? Oh... My Dad loved stuffing and as I saw it this butchered bird was his ticket into my Mom's New World (Jehovah's Witness code for heaven or Utopia) because inside of that gigantic bird's chain-sawed crater my Mom had filled it with about 50lbs of Safeway stuffing. In leveling it (the stuffing) with a Sears Craftsman hand trowel my Mom made that turkey look like a tabletop mountain with wings and legs or some kind of a birdworld aircraft carrier. Your choice. It was plain God awful ugly, folks! Worse yet, there was hardly any white meat! I loved the white! After bowing my head and faking a prayer to the Jehovah God who would off my friends, I quickly gave the illusion of eating and excused myself. As I ran out the door to a friend's house for Thanksgiving left-overs I remember my Dad yelling at me, "Don't let the Goddamn flies out!"
Happy Thanksgiving LOOONG time!!! JG;)
