The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

Thanksgiving overview There has been many a merry Thanksgiving spent in this neck of the woods. Some better than others, but all a good time for family, friends and sometimes total strangers to get together and eat beef or turkey.

It was Charlie Russell who said that beef ought to be served for Thanksgiving dinner, not turkey, as Montana owes much more to beef cattle than to turkeys.

Whatever was served, in the early days people cooking and celebrating Thanksgiving would check with local hotels and make sure that no one was left out of a Thanksgiving dinner. That made for total strangers sharing the Thanksgiving bounty with various families and some peculiar situations. Looking back on that tradition, most old, old timers said it was a good tradition even if once in a while the family entertained a pick pocket or a thief who stole a valuable painting from the front vestibule of the house as he or she departed when no one was looking.

No matter what time in our history that Thanksgiving was celebrated, it is like one young lady said, “I love Thanksgiving because it is just a wonderful time for families to get together and share a really great meal and there is nothing like presents to worry about. Just the meal and friendship.”

Trouble with turkeys Well, that was not always true. Matter of fact in this area for many years while turkeys were the meal of choice for Thanksgiving, they were few and far between. And then there was always the chance of getting hoodwinked by what was handed off as a turkey.

A case in point was the rancher from Ada who killed 45 eagles one Thanksgiving. He dressed them and brought them to town and sold them as scrawny turkeys. He sold every eagle. Unsuspecting denizens of the area (or maybe they did suspect something but a scrawny bird in the hand was better than none at all) cooked them up. If people dared to confront the cook of the house, it was to complain that not only was the Thanksgiving “turkey” really scrawny but where was the white meat?

Still it was better than eating roast porcupine or beaver.

Another Thanksgiving the famous Board of Trade Saloon in Havre had fifty fat, live Missouri turkeys brought in which they proposed to raffle off. Raffle them off they did. Fifty people went home with a plump live turkey to celebrate the occasion. Tragedy struck when in the words of the local newspaper, if you did not have your turkey locked in a cage next to your bed, you woke up two days later with no turkey. All but a few of the turkeys had been stolen.

Not to worry though, for The Board of Trade magically came up with forty more fat sleek turkeys to raffle off and raffle them off they did. This time the raffle included not only the turkey but a cage with a lock and key that only the winner had.

Around 1906 Frank Buttrey had enough of the turkey scams. He bought a huge amount of turkeys one spring and put an advertisement in the newspaper that said something like this: “Farm kids, come to Buttrey’s Fair Store on Saturday and receive a free male and female turkey. Raise them for the summer. Bring two of the offspring, one male and one female back in the fall and sell the rest.” Old timers from the North Country to Clear Creek and down the Milk River Valley clearly remembered years afterward that turkey caper as their first entry into raising something on their own. And the exercise was more than successful. Never again would there be a shortage of turkeys north of the Missouri.

Childhood Thanksgivings In my family we spent many a Thanksgiving stuffed to the gills. Apparently mother and father were very popular members of the family. It was typical, when I was a boy, for us to be invited to three or four Thanksgiving dinners. That seemed to be fine, but sadly, mother and father refused to say no to any of the invites. In looking back on it, it would appear to me that mother thought that if we went to father’s house for Thanksgiving we should go to her family home as well.

One year we started out at Grandma Lucke’s house for a dinner at noon. Soon afterward we drove to Gildford with mother’s mother and father to have dinner at 4 with mother’s sister and her family. Later that night father’s brother and his wife had invited us to their house for turkey sandwiches and leftovers. We went to all three occasions. By the time we were through with that day there was pumpkin pie coming out our ears!

Grandma Lucke was one of those people who scoured her address book to make sure that there was no one left without a turkey dinner at Thanksgiving. Grandma Lucke had her very definite likes and dislikes. But at Thanksgiving she would invite people that she could not stand to be around if she thought they were not going to get a meal. She might not speak to them but they never went hungry at her table. She had a table that would hold around thirty people and frequently it was full. If only the immediate family had gathered for dinner there was enough room to spread the table out in the large dining room of her house. But, just as many times, the table was stretched out into the living room and held all thirty people. I came over the night before Thanksgiving and got the table and chairs arranged the way Grandma Lucke wanted them and always sampled the dressing. If I said the dressing was perfect, she insisted that I taste it again and again. Finally I learned to say, “It could use more sage.” Then she was happy as she dumped more fresh sage into what seemed to be a wash tub of dressing.

Thanksgiving foods

Through the years food for Thanksgiving has not changed very much. Probably the biggest change has been that stuffing has turned into dressing in many families. Back in my childhood, a person would never cook a turkey without first stuffing the big bird with delicious stuffing. That has really changed as time moved on. People got afraid of using stuffing inside the bird because of a variety of reasons. I once knew a man who got very sick and had to go to the hospital where his doctor blamed it on uncooked stuffing in the turkey. Hence we have dressing which is made with the same ingredients as stuffing but not put in the turkey at all. Some people do baste that dressing with turkey juices before serving. Grandma Lucke was way ahead of her time. She served a big bowl of wet stuffing and another bowl of dry dressing on her holiday table.

Another change, at least in my family, was that in early years we always had mince meat pie made with venison mincemeat made by the Presbyterian Ladies. They guarded their recipe like it was gold and many early area Thanksgiving feasts would never be without mincemeat pie. It was served as often as the more famous pumpkin pie.

At both grandmother’s houses there were many side dishes served. Grandma Stuart was famous for her wonderful corn salad. Grandma Lucke was famous for her tender green beans. Both were famous for their pickles. They canned all fall and by Thanksgiving we all shared the fruits of their canning. There were bread and butter pickles and garlic dills and beet pickles to die for.

I did not know until years later just how difficult that meal was to prepare. These days if invited to dinner, most everyone brings a dish of something or other. Both of my grandmothers would have been upset if that was the case with them. They wanted to prepare the meal themselves from start to finish. Only after dinner would they stoop to letting lady guests (only) help with the dishes. Men stood aside and talked or in later years watched football on television while we kids would go to a new movie on Thanksgiving afternoon.

At Grandma Lucke’s house her oldest son at the dinner was given the honor of carving the turkey.

In mid life my mother started cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Her meals were a blending of both grandmother’s meals and very good. For several years I found myself unable to say no and would eat a second Thanksgiving meal at Francis and Laened Black’s house on Second Avenue in Havre. It was amazing how Laened took the same turkey and ingredients and put her wonderful spin on it and how it turned out amazingly different than anyone else’s turkey dinner. Laened Black was the best cook I ever knew in my life. Whatever she cooked turned simply heavenly and a turkey dinner was no exception.

Regarding food, the bottom line is that the traditional Thanksgiving meal has not changed much at all in the last one hundred years! That is amazing.

Never A Bad Thanksgiving

I have had some strange Thanksgiving dinners through the years. Some I remember. Others I have to be reminded of.

One Thanksgiving mother went to California for Thanksgiving. I stayed in Havre and my Uncle Al invited some friends and me to a turkey dinner at his Beaver Creek cabin. We got there for some libations around 2pm, having been told we were going to eat at 4pm. The turkey smelled heavenly in the old oven. The libations tasted even better. Especially to Uncle Al. By 8pm we still had not eaten. When at 9pm Al finally took the turkey out of the oven, it was a tiny blackened mass in a large roaster, unrecognizable as every being a turkey or anything else for that matter. But we were all very happy!

My sister Lou Ann tells me that when I was teaching in Glasgow I asked her to ride the Empire Builder down to Glasgow and cook a turkey for my friends and me. She swears that she learned later that she cooked the turkey upside down and that it had the juiciest breast meat ever. I remember nothing of that.

I can remember cooking my first turkey dinner at my Alkali Springs Cabin when I was in my 30’s. I had all the guests bring something. I cooked the turkey, dressing and made the gravy. The meal was a splendid feast but I must say that was when I began to appreciate my mother and grandmothers more. That is one huge amount of work for an hour of eating. Although that is not quite true. There are those heavenly turkey sandwiches for several days later.

These days I usually go out to friends and family for Thanksgiving but I refuse to go turkeyless for the holiday myself so I cook a turkey as well mainly for the leftovers. My turkey dinners get more simple all the time. Instead of many side dishes, if I get turkey, stuffing, gravy, potatoes and cranberries and a vegetable on the table I have done a world of work. Needless to say all those leftovers make my dog Fala very happy!

The Reason for the Season

I think that when we humans get older we appreciate more the true reasons for this wonderful season. I know I do. In spite of the adversities that everyone has, I am so very thankful for family and friends and that I can share all of these experiences with you very dear readers. You will never know how it warms the cockles of my heart when you meet me in the grocery store or post office and tell me you made one of my recipes and it was good or that you would not miss reading what I write or that the Presbyterian Bible Study shares the Ole and Lena jokes found in “The Mountaineer”.

Without you readers, my life would be very dull. So Thanks and to you and yours from me and mine, the very best Thanksgiving ever!