I have interviewed many people about their Thanksgiving dinners through the years. I have yet to tell anyone of my Thanksgiving disaster. I think that if they did have one, they buried it, because it was so horrible.

In my family there were two fairly terrible episodes.

One occurred when I was a child and the other occurred at my house in Somers when I was an adult.

The Thanksgiving incident at Somers as it is called in my family to this day happened when I had bought a large Thanksgiving turkey and it seemed like things were going well until my mother came in the door of the house and said that the turkey was off. It did not smell like turkey cooking. It smelled like something that had been around too long and as long as it cooked the worse it smelled.

Thank heavens I had stuffed the turkey but also had dry dressing to serve. We had to throw the turkey away and mother drove into Kalispell and bought a whole side of turkey breast from a grocery store deli. That turkey cost around fifty dollars and we never did have good gravy to go with that meal.

The other horrible Thanksgiving we had was in Havre at the family home when I was about five years old. Mother had bought a new pressure cooker and was pressure cooking potatoes for her Thanksgiving dinner. Suddenly the top came off the pressure cooker, there was a minor explosion and there were slick potatoes all over the kitchen floor.

At the time of the explosion Grandma Lucke was just coming in the back door, slipped on the slick floor and crashed to the floor ruining all the still warm rolls she had been bringing.

Grandma Lucke went to the hospital and found out she had a broken elbow and after the floor dried out, we had a good dinner but no potatoes and do you know, I never saw my mother try to use a pressure cooker ever again!

Can’t say as I don’t blame her!