The First Thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving was at our house, 7 Maple St. in a shoreline town in Connecticut. Even without presents it was our favorite holiday. The right time of year with one last football contest between the two rivals. Cider from Ziggy York’s fruit farm and the thrill-seeking joy of zinging horse chestnuts at cars from behind a tree. The big deal though was the cousins coming down from Hartford which made for a houseful. Lots of cooking which my mother was up to. Great food. Great fun.

My mother died before I went in the army and my father a year after I got out. We had moved to North Conway before that and it is where I wanted to be. Still do. But there was a tug to the old sod and especially around turkey day. My older sister and her husband who still lived in Milford had become sort of surrogate parents in that we younger Cases could always crash at their house, sponge their booze and get laundry done. They had four kids and invited some of the orphans to join them for some turkey. I had a not yet one year old and my high school brother. Wife-one thought we should bring him up after the pere passed. My sister Mary was preggers and she and Brian came down with us. I borrowed Tommy Mulkern’s Plymmie station wagon for the six hour trip.

The only rule I remember was you could only spark up a new one when we hit a new highway. I made it all the way to Dover, maybe sixty miles, before I got popped for speeding with this comical gaggle of hippies at a time when the pigs were not cool with that scene. I had to go to the police station to sort things out. Quelle trip.
Some of the wine brought for the big day managed to survive the trip but we were a little bit giddy when we got to the house. I hatched a plan to surprise our hosts and when my sister opened the front door there was Taffy, Brian and I wearing only the ties we had brought to wear at dinner. As hoped for Giggy freaked out and I remember her saying she hadn’t seen me or Taff naked since she changed our diapers.
That set the tone for the next twenty five years. The group got bigger and included cousins, more and more spouses and once in a while some outside guests. I remember before we headed off to the Milford–Stratford hundred year old football contest, hearing my baby brother pop a cork on a bottle of Wild Turkey with his teeth. He spit it across the drive way and said casually, “I guess I won’t be needing that any more.” He was wearing roller skates.

We seldom sat less than 25 to dinner. My brother-in-law was a genius at turning the living room into a banquet hall with tables he had cadged from the private school where he taught. The neighbors were also into the bacchanalia that decended on them every fourth Wednesday in November. Thanksgiving eve, my young nepot Pete, who now owns all the music in NYC, would lead revelers around the neighborhood singing turkey carols which consisted largely of “gobble gobble gobble” to the tune of jingle bells. With his back up group (BUG) of twenty or so he would lead us in a song of his own creation. PETE: “I saw your hiney. BUG: boomp boomp boomp boomp. PETE: it’s white and shiny. REPEAT CHORUS. PETE: You’d better hide it. CHORUS and PETE again: before I bite it.” Well-wishers in the door ways of the neighborhood would raise an appreciative glass and wipe the tears from their eyes.

One year while we were making our bibulous rounds, a brightly painted papier mache turkey with a yellow bathing cap, a red rubber glove for a wattle, and wearing green tights, came out of the bushes doing more of a chicken walk than a turkey strut while holding up a sign that read EAT ME! He said he had stayed up the whole night before (wink, wink) fabricating this fabulous Melleagris Gallipolis and some how managed to pull the bit off without anyone knowing ahead of time. It topped the top. He also brought an album, one of those big round black plastic thingys that when properly spun will play music. None of us had yet heard of Bruce Springsteen. That has now changed. Thanks, Paulie.

On the twentieth anniversary we decided to do a black tie dinner. I came up from DC, folks came down from VT and NH. Doc flew in from AZ and Mike from AK. One year Taffy came in from Paris but I don’t think that was the year. Anygate, the grown-ups towed the line in traditional garb. The college girls thought it was a hookers ho down or something and showed up looking like Miss Kitty or Madeleine Kahn in Blazing Saddles. I’m looking at the group photo right now (back when only Gig was gray) and I’m almost sure that some where Federico Fellini is smiling.

The kids grew up and got married and had to start sharing their Thanksgiving with complete strangers. Bob and Gig retired to VT and we tried to keep up the Hunter Thompson pace over there but it fizzled. Yet the tradition lives on in each of our own homes. We will be having twenty this year including two of us who were at the first Thanksgiving ever.