Listening to the radio the other day, the DJ asked people to call in with their Thanksgiving Dinner nightmares. Thanksgiving 2001 was just that. I hadn’t had a holiday dinner at my house in 10 years. We had been building the house and living in the “trailer” all that time, so I really wasn’t able to entertain. Brian had just gotten out of the Army and he and Cynthia were living close by, so I decided to invite the whole family.

The week before Thanksgiving, Cynthia and I went to Heritage Antiques, and I found my dinning room set. A Birdseye Maple table, buffet and corner hutch. I just had to have it! We brought it home the day before Thanksgiving. I don’t remember when the buffet and hutch actually came into the house, but the table was brought up the morning of Thanksgiving. It’s no easy task to get things up to and into our house, we have the road up the hill and that year we decided the best vehicle was our van. Until we found someone that would grade our road, we hadn’t at that time, when going up our road you never knew if you were going to make it all the way to the top. Driving up my new antique dinning set, didn’t go well. The van started to slide and there it was halfway up and sideways on the road. Randy waited for Brian and Cynthia to get here, he and Brian tied a rope to the front of the van, Brian drove his truck past the van, then while Randy was in the van, driving, steering, Brian pulled the van the rest of the way up.

So now the dinning table was finally in the house, but my morning preparations for getting ready for guests was at the least drastically shortened. At that time my antique Wedgewood stove‘s oven was not working yet, so I would bake, with my propane bar-b-que. It really is a very good substitute for an oven. I already had the turkey in there cooking, and I had the whole ham in my mom’s oven, down the hill, she was cooking that for me. As Cynthia was putting her deviled eggs into the refrigerator they slid and onto the floor they went. She is fast though so the 5-second rule was in play and they were all saved! I decided I should get the potatoes all peeled and have them in water so I could just cut them up and turn on the heat. While doing that I went to baste the turkey, and I hadn’t noticed that the wind had come up, so when I opened the lid, the fire was out. I re-lit the bar-b-que and went back to my other preparations. Half an hour later, I went to baste the bird, the fire was out again, the wind was not letting up and was just getting worse, so now my dinner is an hour behind schedule. I decided that I should take the turkey down to my mom’s to cook it, thinking the ham had been cooking for an hour or so, it is fully cooked, and I could use my broiler, it’s a really big broiler and I could just keep the flame down low, to warm it the rest of the way and brown the glaze on it later.

Sometime during switching the turkey and the ham, I must have dressed, but I really don’t remember. Now everyone was starting to arrive. I had only invited 12 people, they were all family, but I was so nervous, I guess I just wanted everything to be nice, and it just became a blur, I remember thinking what am I doing, what should I be doing? Of course the dishes and pots and pans for preparing a big dinner were piling up so, I knew I needed to get them washed and get them out of the way before the last flurry before the meal. I had vaguely noticed that the water didn’t seem very hot the last few times I rinsed my hands, I keep my water heater set to the hottest setting, and use the hottest water my hands can take, and sure enough the wind had blown out the water heater. I had no hot water. Maybe if my kitchen were separate from the dinning room I wouldn’t have minded all the pots, pans, bowls and every other utensil piled up on the counter, but, as it is the table is right next to the counter.

I left the mess and turned on the potatoes. Everyone was here now, and I realized I had never set the table! I don’t know who did, as I’m writing this I can see what a control freak I am….whatever. Auntie Em called about this time, she and Dan had been sitting in traffic on the 90 freeway for 2 hours and they finally decided to turn around and go home….with all the desserts! Fortunately I had asked Pat to bring pumpkin pie and she brought two and an apple pie too. Lynne had brought the spinach dip with bread and a veggie tray. I took the paper off the ham and put the glaze on it, it did all right, some parts were hotter than other parts, some were actually burnt, but after carving no one really knew. Someone brought the turkey up for me…mom did an excellent job with it, as usual. As I went to pour some of my potato water into the turkey juice for the gravy, I saw that I had not cut up the potatoes, of course they weren’t done, mom and Pat said, “it’s okay”. I felt like, when is this day ever going to end. They were right though, it took a little longer for the potatoes to cook, which actually gave the ham longer to get at least to room temperature.

We all sat down, thanked the good Lord we were all together, and started passing….the not very warm ham, the miss-shaped eggs, the very lumpy potatoes, the turkey was good, and really so was everything. We had good food, good company, laughter, warmth and no dishes to do, because we still had not been able to keep the water heater lit. So we played charades after dinner, instead of doint dishes. And remembering back it was a very Happy Thanksgiving.