Two thousand and two was not the only Thanksgiving made infamous by the Grammy.
When my sister Nancy and her husband Paul moved into their new home around 1969, my mother (she was the Grammy of only one back then) heaved a sigh of relief and immediately heaped responsibility for all family holiday observances upon the young couple. Over the decades, their hospitality has been constant and unrivaled, and in recent years their daughters have sustained the tradition.
However, and I can't recall the circumstances, there was one year in the early eighties when the Grammy stepped to the fore and offered to provide Thanksgiving dinner. My mother was never exactly known as a Martha Stewart prototype, and we siblings were a bit apprehensive--we'd grown up eating hot dogs split down the middle and Cain's Sandwich Spread sandwiches. We could only hope for the best.
Then, a couple of days before Thanksgiving, my sister called.
"Mum called me," Nancy said. "She wanted to tell me she bought the turkey."
"That's great!"
"Uh, there may be a problem. She said that the turkey weighs eight pounds."
"Eight pounds! There are 12 people coming! Eight pounds! That's not even a big chicken!"
"I tried to tell her, but she won't listen. I don't want her feelings hurt. We have to call everyone and tell them to take just a little turkey."
And so we did. Everyone around the table loaded up on mashed potatoes and took sparse portions of the bird. I had a drumstick and "the Pope's nose" (the fatty meat around the tailbone); my sister had one slice of white meat. The Grammy smiled blissfully, having provided such a feast. She was the Hostess with the Mostest.
As they cleared the table, the Grammy sidled over to Nancy and showed her the meat platter with a few stray pieces of gristly thigh meat.
"See? There's leftovers," the Grammy smugly told my sister. "I knew all along that turkey was big enough."
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3 comments:
Your Grammy and I would be such good friends....
Well, ask and you shall receive! I love the Grammy stories.
This reminds me of a story a friend of mine told. She was from a very large family and on Sunday after church their mother always fixed a big fried chicken dinner compolete with dessert. On one particular Sunday their preacherand his family stopped by after church and, of course, were invited to stay for dinner. Her mother, being afraid that there wouldn't be enough fried chicken to go around pulled all of her 10 children aside and told them not to eat any chicken and that she would make it up to them later. So they obediently passed when the chicken was offered to them. They were all looking forward to the chocolate pie for dessert and figured they'd fill up the empty spot then. Well, when the pie was being sliced and the first one piped up and asked for his piece, their mother put them all in shock when she declared, "No, I'm sorry, if you can't eat your chicken you don't get any dessert either".
Can't you just see the looks on their faces!
Mom sure was thinking fast!
8 pounds! I think I've had squab bigger than that. Where does one even find such a thing? You gotta hand it to the Grammy ~ she certainly knew how to present a meal. ;) And you all knew how to make it work.
The pope's nose! ;D I love it ~ I haven't it called that in ages! In our house, it was the prize.
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