55th anniversary of President's Kennedy's death. I saw him 3 months before that, standing straight up in his limousine, moving about 5 mph, greeting people.
One time when I was little and we were REALLY poor my mom bought those Jenny O turkey loaves in metal pans. The half white and half dark kind. Didn't cook it all the way it was gooey in the middle. WORST THANKSGIVING EVER
Hosted for the first time. We have a very small house (less than 1000 sq ft), and only a 2.5ft x 4ft table. Cleared nearly all furniture out of our living/dining room are except our sofa, and brought in a camping table to go alongside our dining table to make room for 9. Roasted just a 12lb turkey, also had a 3lb ham, two stuffings (turkey and cornbread), two mashed potatoes ("loaded" and roasted garlic), green bean casserole, mac and cheese (for my 4-year-old nephew), and of course pumpkin and apple pies. As we're prepping, we get a call from my mother-in-law telling us my father-in-law is at the VA hospital being checked out because of a fall he suffered the day before. Possibly may need a splenectomy. But not today, apparently, because they released him 10 minutes before they were supposed to be at our house. OK...dinner's delayed. No biggie. Called my nephew (not the 4-year-old) to find out if he and his brother were en route. Find out that their paraplegic mother who wasn't planning on coming had changed her mind, and he's in the process of getting her and her wheelchair ready to travel. Ok, awesome! Whoops...gotta rearrange the tables to accommodate the wheelchair. No worries, we can adjust. Oh, better put all the food into the oven to keep everything warm. Anyway...an hour later than we planned, the 10 of us sit down and have a great Thanksgiving. More than enough food for everyone, all the dishes tasted good, the youngster even ate more than just the Mac and cheese. And people hung out at our house for about 4 hours before everyone left, without our tiny house feeling cramped. All in all, a successful first hosting effort. Now time to go to my mom's house for dinner #2...
I'm sure your wife will now make up for it. We, also, were pretty poor but we always splurged on a turkey. My aunt usually did the cooking because my mom was not known for her cooking.
I've had an interesting life. I've shaken hands with Richard Nixon and talked to and shook hands with Nelson Rockefeller. My aunt was babysitter to Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, and got invited to the opening of the movie in Atlanta where all the movie stars were in attendance. She also got invited to a party afterwards again attended by all the movie stars. I was the manufacturing engineer who built the box that shoots the world's most powerful nuclear missile, the Peacekeeper, aka the MX. Werner Von Braun's secretary invited me to meet him. I turned her down which I still kick myself for not doing. There's probably other stuff that doesn't immediately come to mind. Oh yeah, there was this time in '68 Vietnam when they put me on a machine gun, an M60, that I had never seen before. I didn't even know how to load the thing. Figured it out on the fly. Forest Gump was a low IQ individual and I was not. I volunteered to be an MP while in Basic Training but the corporal handing out assignments sent me to an electronics school that lasted 7 months. With my tour of duty in combat and my two months of Leave out of my two years of service, I had precious little other time to do anything. Didn't even have to serve in the active reserves because I had been in combat.
