Re-thinking this, Jody dumped the shrimp and ran them through the tank and conveyor and weighed them and put them in boxes, iced. They would have trusted him to do that himself. So the fish house didn't have to do anything, except count the boxes and pay him.

My first year at college, my friend and I were going to take the Greyhound to St Louis, then fly home from there. Normally about a 4 hour trip altogether (this was mid-70s before extensive security gates in the airports and certainly way before TSA)

There was a snowstorm and the 2-hour bus ride took over 4 hours. Missed our flight, but iirc it was cancelled anyway. Standing in line at the ticket counter for a few hours, w finally got seats for the 8am next day, Thanksgiving.

But what to do overnight? My friend's aunt she's uncle lived near STL, they offered to have us stay over, but we all decided it was better to stay at an airport hotel. Fortunately they did have a room, probably the last one. I think her uncle had an "in'. He actually drove out to the airport and dropped us off at the hotel.

Next morning after about 4 hours of sleep we boarded our flight, more weather delays, and we made it home in time for dinner. Yum.

Early in my marriage, my DH and I decided to drive (Seattle to Berkeley, CA) to attend my BFF from college's wedding, It was a small affair - mostly family and some close local friends - to be held the day after T'day and Paula had no idea we would turn up. We hoped the surprise would add to the day's memories :-)

We were both working at the time so a lot to pack into a single weekend.....it's a bit of a haul from Seattle to NoCal! Thanksgiving Day was spent on the road but we did stop for a more or less traditional T'day dinner at a hotel in southern Oregon. It was nothing to write home about but the surprise on my friend's face as she saw us when she walked down the "aisle" the next afternoon - invited but completely unexpected attendees - was priceless!! Some 35 years later I remember it well :-)

One year, when I was about ten years old, we had guests for Thanksgiving -- aunt, uncle and three cousins, as well as our family of seven. Dining table at its longest extension with five leaves and every chair from the kitchen as well and a couple of stools.

Mum roasted two huge turkeys. Favorite uncle was at one end of table to carve, Dad at other end with second turkey. All the fixings, of course. And so the carving began...

Uncle was whacking away with the knife, handing out large, chunky portions. Dad, who was an excellent carver, properly "trained", took his time slicing elegant, thin slices. It was a slow, careful process.

Needless to say, everyone wanted Uncle's less-elegant, generous offerings, which were available more quickly than Dad's! LOL. It was a good feast, indeed!

My most memorable Thanksgiving was the one I spent visiting friends in Sonoma county and ended up in the hospital with appendicitis. I was in the hospital in Sonoma for five days and had to hire someone to drive my car back to Los Angeles when I got out.

The year was 1979; my husband had gone to CA in search of work because the recession had already hit our area hard. My sister was recently divorced - I invited her and her 2 children to come have dinner with me.

It was one disaster after another - the raisins for the Waldorf salad were infested with some kind of larvae (discovered after we dumped them into the bowl with the chopped apples, celery and nuts), the oven decided to not heat (fortunately she had roasted the turkey at her house), the whipped cream became butter... really we both knew how to cook LOL!

With the help of my kind neighbor's oven, we did get a nearly complete dinner on the table .... which her youngest promptly threw up on, right after saying grace.

Turks & Caicos, on a live-aboard dive yacht. There was a pumpkin carving contest. An underwater pumpkin hunt (little soft ball sized pumpkins), we won! We came up from a dive, the last before moving the boat behind a reef, a hurricane was moving in. Rough water up top, we surfaced....and the boat wasn't there...............it had broken the mooring line. We located it in the distance, 6' waves, we swam to it. One guy handed his camera up to a dock hand, to free his hands....and dropped his camera. We had to leave it. We hunkered down for three days, waiting for the storm to pass, diving next to the shore line out of the storms path. Went back....swimming large loops, a technique learned in "Search and Recovery"....and a dive master found it about half a mile away from where it was dropped. ☺

I had a tiny office with a window looking down on Broadway back when the Thanksgiving Day parade went by there. I invited a few friends to come up. Then I saw an ad on Craigslist where someone said that his elderly father was coming to town, and he was trying to get seats in the very limited bleacher space. I contacted him and invited them to my office, deciding to call it a party. And it was! It turned out to be a blustery, rainy day, so the bleachers would have been awful. I felt bad for bands marching in that mess, and we saw more than a few people slip on the wet pavement. But we were warm, watching out the window, brunching on bagels.

What a nice thing you did, Jupidupi.

This was probably in the fifties. My DM laid the table with all her best china and crystal, etc. Friends of the family drove to us from 50 miles away, a couple with two girls, When they arrived the youngest, a Brownie, presented her hand made place card holders -- slits cut in raw baking potatoes. Mom may have rolled her eyes but of course she put them on the table. (I don't think they leaked onto the lace.) The 'memorable' part came later as it started to snow heavily during dinner and continued into a blizzard. There was no driving home for the friends so they over-nighted.

I really enjoyed reading about your memories. Mine is from when we had been married for about a year and a half and lived about 3 hours from our hometown. I was terribly home sick and we were determined to make it home even though the snow was coming down hard with no let up in site. I walked to the grocery store which was less than 1/2 mile away and bought a turkey just in case (Iwas young and dumb,,,,how did I think it would thaw). We ended up driving the next day and it took us about 7 hours on treacherous roads but we made it!

Enjoying reading these too. I have no stories, though. The only thing that I can remember happening is once when the kids were young I dropped a turkey in the floor. I vaguely remember washing it and then roasting it. No big deal.

After I had broken up with my Ex thanksgiving was coming. He was a fanatic for Turkey but me not so much. Bizarrely the grocery store in my small southern town was offering Emu roasts. I cant imagine who they thought would buy it but it tickled my fancy. I did some fun sides and a pie. You can cook Emu rare just like duck so I did. It was very good. I was finishing a house I was building at the time and my buyers came by and I served them Emu which they thought was creepy but game to try. They admitted it was tasty. How did I know how to cook Emu? I have no idea.

My most memorable Thanksgiving was the one when my sister died that morning.

Only one was really memorable. And not in a good way.. Holidays were not always the same but they were always happy growing up. I had been cooking the big meal for the family for several years by the time I was 18. That year, I was still single, living with my parents and just started college. My siblings were all married. A couple very newly married and everyone was coming.

Now, I am not sure what happens to older siblings when they wed, but mine took to parenting me. That year, while I was dutifully preparing the feast, I was bombarded with all sorts of unsolicited advice from everything from my appearance to my major in college to my job to my car to the state of my bedroom....

"Amy you need to cut your hair."

"You've picked up a few pounds huh?"

"Why did you list THAT as your major. You SHOULD.......YADA YADA "

"Your room is a mess. And why is it still pink? Are you four?!??!?!"

"Why are you working night shift? No one wants to marry a night shift girl. They are going to think your loose!"

"Did you go to church last week? Did you learn anything? You should come to our church so I can make sure you're going"

And on and on and on. All day. Its like they worked in shifts or something.

Now I am not someone who is or ever has been concerned with peoples opinion on me, my appearance, my habits or my lifestyle. Ever. But I am aggressively opposed to being nagged, least of all all day. And on a holiday at that. I was shaking with fury. Here I was,cooking for them. I had researched recipes and planned so carefully to make something a little different but delicious and I was being nagged to death by my family.

So, I finished cooking, plunked all the food on the counter, announced that the food was done. And while everyone else dug in, satisfied that they had graced me with all their worldly wisdom, I went to my messy pink room, packed a bag, went out the front door, drove and hour away and checked myself into a luxury suite for the night. I had not thought about food or anything else. But peace was worth being a bit hungry for the night, and i hadn't the heart to call room service on a holiday,though i did order breakfast the next morning. About an hour and a half after I left my mom called me to find out where I was. She is an extremely passive person, will not put her foot down or stand up to or for anyone, but found the voice to tell me I was being a brat,and to come home NOW or move out next week. I told her I would move out. The fact is, I did not need to live there. My mom did not want me to leave when I turned 18 and practically begged me to stay home. She forgot all that when my other siblings came to visit of course. I never got an apology or a thank you for cooking through all that, and my father convinced me to stay at home, though the hotel check in became something of a ritual/treat whenever certain siblings came to stay just to make a point. The nagging and parenting from the family has not stopped but now I have my own house to go to and escape.

I have been fortunatethat for the most part, my immediate family has lived fairly close together and always gather on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because we realized how fortunate we were, my Mom started making a point of inviting, "orphans and strays." We have had some of the most delightful guests, from the homeless fellow that lives in our town, to visitors from overseas, to friends of our kids who had less than idealic home lives.

Marilyn, talk about working hard for your dinner! I enjoyed your story about you and Jody working together and rolling with it. So nice to have those memories.

My best memories are of spending almost every Thanksgiving of my childhood with my Dad’s fairly large family. Everyone lived within a 20 minute drive. My grandmother was frail and lived with an Aunt and Uncle. They usually hosted and my two aunts, another uncle, and their families (our cousins) always came and enjoyed the good food prepared and shared by all. Back then, my Dad’s family raised and grew a lot of what they ate, so we had corn and beans from their summer gardens, eggs were from their hens, and if ham was served, it was from someone’s hog. Turkey was purchased as no one raised those, and we always had an array of homemade desserts from which to choose.

Probably 2000 or 2001 - we still had a group of friends we would share Thanksgiving with. I was cooking the day before, it was cold and I was listening to a community radio station from Provincetown (WOMR). They had Alice Brock in the studio and she told stories about her Stockbridge, MA diner and Arlo Guthrie's recording of "Alice's Restaurant". The windows were steamy, the kitchen smelled great and I was revisiting my younger self. I keep that music CD with my Thanksgiving tableware and we have always listened to his song at noon every Thanksgiving for over 40 years.

Pleasant but generic memories of all but one Thanksgiving. "That" Thanksgiving is the one I missed due to food poisoning -- must have picked it up Weds evening, because by Thursday morning it was clear nothing was going to stay in my system, not even little sips of water. Flat out sick for three whole days, finally could keep water down on Sunday -- just in time for the four hour drive home. To add to my misery, my MIL was an excellent cook so I totally missed her wonderful holiday feast.

Terilyn, so sad about your sister.

The Thanksgiving i remember was the one where my father said the turkey was a little dry. My mother was crushed and looked downcast for the rest of the meal. She was a wonderful cook and took pride in making a wonderful meal.

Terilyn, I am sorry about your sister. That is indeed a very sad memory.

I can't think of any one Thanksgiving that stands out from all the others. Seems like every Thanksgiving night I go to bed thinking "This was the best ever". Sure, we've had some ups and downs, differences of opinion, etc. But for the most part, it always ends up good, and for that I am very thankful!

A big change did come to our dinners, though, the year one of my sons discovered deep frying turkey. We all loved it, and none of us have ever looked back.

Rusty

I love fried turkey, too, Rusty. One year someone gave us a fried turkey. It was the only one we ever ate the whole thing. Usually after a few days, we get tired of it and I cut the meat up and give it to the cats.

I've never had deep fried turkey but have always wanted to try one (if someone else made it). My youngest brother deep fries his turkey, but we live too far from each other and don't get together for Thanksgiving. We'll send leftovers home this year with our friend. Our turkey is only 10 lbs. so we shouldn't have trouble finishing most of it and maybe vacuum sealing some of it to put in the freezer.

I've also "never" had fried turkey. What's the big difference?

First, and only time hosting Thanksgiving, while my brother was carving the turkey, his son who was about 8 or 9 at that time, sneezed directly on the turkey. Next my brother says "What the heck?". I had not pulled the package of giblets out of the turkey.

For the most part our Thanksgivings have been more or less the same - except for the year my sister-in-law and her family came to dinner and she wanted to make the mashed potatoes. She asked her DH to grab the milk and by mistake he grabbed the gallon of Fred's Sipping Eggnog that was mellowing in a gallon milk container. She didn't notice it until the aroma of rye wafted up. She managed to salvage a small portion.

Nicole, it is very moist and the flavor is a little more like fried chicken, although fried turkey isn't breaded, like you would do if making fried chicken.

Sheilajoyce, that is so sweet! Obviously that memory has lasted a lifetime.

We deep fried a turkey one year, by 'we' I mean my brother. He researched the fryers in depth, bought one, did not even think of oil and about 10 PM the night before he and my sisters son drove to every convenience store within about 20 square miles - purchasing multiple 16 oz bottles of multiple brands as that was all they had to offer. I'm the family gravy maker and wasn't prepared for no drippings. Nothing else was ready and brother began to panic, said the turkey was turning into a meteor so we went into overdrive trying to get things finished and on the table. It was very nicely browned and slightly underdone in the center. We didn't deep fry another.

One of the tastiest turkeys I've had was a gift from a contractor....smoked. It made for a lovely buffet platter and the best sandwiches ever that weekend.

I just watched (listened to, I was busy cleaning the master bath) a program Foodnetwork where they spatch cocked a turkey and smoked it on a gas grill with a wood chip box. It seemed reasonably easy and looked delicious, was getting rave reviews. I may try that sometime (not this coming week)....there were drippings, it was cooked on a rack over a disposable roasting pan of simple vegetables that looked tempting too.

Not too many Thanksgivings really stand out. Some of the months my dad was ill when I was a child, he was in the Vets hospital a couple of hours from home. We had long time family friends in that city and were going there for the holiday and overnight. Storming terribly, windy and raining torrents/buckets. There was water over the freeway in a few places and the state patrol was advising turning around. We did, with no holiday food at home and nothing open. My mother had made a whipped jello salad, we had little cans of mini oysters she had hoped to add to the dressing, crackers, soft drinks that were never in the house during a normal week and had a makeshift Thanksgiving picnic in our pajamas in front of the fireplace ;)

Marilyn_c, thank you for starting this conversation. These are great stories. We have a finite number of Thanksgiving days in our lives and some are marked with potent history. I am grateful to all who have shared their memories. Some make me laugh, some make me cry.

I grew up in a military family. Given family is one you're born to, and chosen family, well, you can guess (thanks David Bromstad!). And we chose a family that moved with us everywhere we went. Holidays were always a big deal because they had four kids, and we were three kids, and all the parents, and anyone who wanted to come. The more, the merrier, it truly was in those days. There was always room at the table. One year, there were so many, we took a door off its hinges and sat it on concrete blocks. Never was a more splendid table.

Marilyn....I always think "I" worked hard....then you tell one of your stories. Dang! You rock! ☺ And ....we LOVE fried chicken...so turkey is our poultry escape....away from fried chicken. :0) I also love stuffing the turkey and gravy made from the drippings.

I'm a shadow of my former self when it comes to working. I was reading the old MH site (they moved to FB) and I don't know how I took care of my stuff, 70 plus possums and Ken too. :))

I have never fried a turkey, but I used to have a turkey fryer, but I don't remember where I got it or what I did with it.