Thanksgiving 1990 or “WHAT WERE WE THINKING”????

Ever have an idea that seems brilliant at the time, but in retrospect seems so incredibly ridiculous that it is hard to admit it was YOURS?   Well, I have to claim responsibility for this particular farce and am the first to admit that its only redeeming quality was that we have some good stories to tell as a result. 

Our son, Kelly, a bachelor at the time, was renting a very beautiful house in Encino with three other guys.  We still lived in our very modest tract house in Reseda, with a tiny kitchen and not a lot of space for entertaining, although we certainly did not let that stop us in most cases.  Thanksgiving had always been at our house, and we did not let our limited space stop us from inviting lots of people.  So it dawns on me that we have a unique opportunity this particular year to use a huge kitchen and have enough space to invite anyone and everyone, and that while it might be a little more work, we would cook Thanksgiving Dinner for everyone at this Encino Bachelor haven. 

My husband, Greg, was not nearly as enthused about this flash of brilliance as I was, but as usual went along with it in the spirit of the season.  Of course, knowing that we would have more room than usual, we invited scores of people, and encouraged them to bring anyone they knew.  My mom would help, as usual, and it would be a huge success. 

Two turkeys were clearly in order.  Two HUGE ones, of course.  Approaching the big day, I went to Kelly’s to survey the equipment and supplies.  Lovely kitchen, nice appliances, NO cooking supplies or utensils.  Ah well, not to be dissuaded from making this a spectacular event, we will simply bring OUR cooking pots and pans over.  Big deal, how hard can that be?  In fact, we will cook one turkey in our oven at home, and one over at the other house, so how GREAT will that be?  We will have twice as much oven space!  OH.  Dishes and serving pieces.  Of course, they have absolutely NONE.  They eat off paper plates and order in.    Oh well, we’ll bring our dishes over as well.  I’ll make a few trips during the week, it will be lovely.  It isn’t that far between our houses… maybe a 10 minute trip each way.  Between Greg, my Mom, and I, we will make this a Thanksgiving to remember in this beautiful house. 

We now have about 20 people coming to this feast.  Of COURSE the boys don’t have a table large enough to seat 20 people.  But Kelly says he will rent tables.  I am still wild with enthusiasm.  I find new pie recipes, I plan every detail, I am in hog heaven.   We are going to rent two long tables, put them together to make one very large square table.  Of course I have no tablecloths even CLOSE to this size, but that’s OK, I’ll buy one. 

So the plan is to do the pies and prep work at our house and then make “a couple” of trips over to Kelly’s on Thanksgiving Day.  We will cook one turkey at home and one over there.  We’ll cook the potatoes and vegetables and last minute dishes at Kelly’s. 

We make an EXTRA huge batch of stuffing the night before.  We make about 10 trips to the house with dishes, serving pieces, and cookware and part of the groceries.  This takes some careful planning folks!  These boys do not have exotic cooking staples such as salt and pepper, sugar and flour.  No.  We have to bring them all.  The closer it gets, the clearer it becomes we have to move the contents of our entire kitchen to their house. 

Now, one of my best friends, Patti Christy, who I met when Kelly was 1 month old, lived in San Diego at the time.  “Come up and join us, and surprise Michael!” I suggest.  (Michael is her son who attends UCLA and is going to be at Kelly’s house for Thanksgiving ) “If you come the day before, we can cook together and it will be just so much fun”.   She agrees it is a great idea and shows up as agreed.  She has been my friend forever, we raised our kids together, she is always helpful and we have a blast together. 

We have moved most things we own to the Encino house.  It is Wednesday night, my mom is over, and we are cooking our heads off, making trips to the boys’ house when necessary to make Thanksgiving day as easy as possible.  We have planned this with detail rivaled only by the Normandy Invasion.  We work well into the night and go to bed feeling in control of yet another lovely Thanksgiving. 

Leaping from bed with our usual Thanksgiving Day enthusiasm, we come to the kitchen to find Patti already up and standing proudly in the kitchen.  She has a surprise for us!!  She got up extra early to help out with the stuffing and has finished it for us to save us time!  We stare at amazement at the enormous bowl of forrest green that is to be our stuffing.  She has put an entire bottle of sage into the bread mixture.  “Don’t you like it that way?  We love sage at our house! ”

Stunned, we try our best not to strangle her, it is not in the spirit of the season.  She is trying to help.  She likes it that way.  Can it be saved?  Folks, let me tell you, that they do not make cooking vessels LARGE enough to mix in enough extra bread, celery and onions to this mixture to make it edible.  The bathtub is not large enough.  If we emptied the swimming pool… maybe. 

So we are good sports, we forge ahead.  Greg takes Turkey #1 over to House #2 to start it roasting.  I put Turkey #2 in House #1 and get it going.  We peel potatoes, we transport them to House #2.  We pass each other on Ventura Boulevard, one going back for one thing, one delivering another.  NOTE:  We do not have cellphones.  This is back in the days when mobile phones were possessions of Swat teams and rich people.  We are neither. 

At last, we decide it is time to move central operations to the Encino House.  We are now all in one place.  We set the enormous table.  We put out appetizers.  The hordes will be arriving soon.  We are still having “fun”. 

Let me just tidy up the kitchen and get the potatoes boiling and the yams cooking.  So what is the worst thing that can happen on a big cooking day, other than the electricity going out and the gas being shut off?  YES.  The garbage disposal can stop working and the sink can be clogged.  That’s right.  The guys try to fix it, it can’t be done, it requires a plumber and we haven’t invited one.  There is nothing to do but start putting garbage in disgusting containers. 

People are arriving now.  Our daughter Kris, has brought her new boyfriend to this occassion and he is very thrilled to be there.  He is so thrilled that he proceeds to drink himself into oblivion.  Filled with booze and thankfulness, he proceeds to stand up and make a very long toast.  Upon finishing, he retires to the kitchen, throws up, and passes out. Kris’ mortification is complete.

The table is SO HUGE that we cannot pass any dishes without STANDING UP and WALKING.  It is not only very long, but it is two tables wide.  People are so far from each other that they have to shout to be heard.  There is constant movement as guests at the north end of the table get up to bring the gravy to those at the south end of the table and those at the south traipse to the north with the bright green stuffing. Those on the east side must stand up to pass butter across the table to the west-siders.   At no point is everyone seated at the same time.

Dinner is over in what seems like SECONDS and everyone slips into an l-tryptophan coma, leaving us with the biggest mess since the Sylmar earthquake of 1971. We can only scrape the large hunks off the plates and cannot wash any dishes as the sink is full of icky water already. 

We load up the trunks of ALL our cars with dirty dishes, dirty pans, and  dirty silverware.  We make three trips with three cars, toting leftovers, supplies, garbage, and cookware back to Reseda.  We are now beyond exhaustion.  Patti, still trying to redeem herself for exposing herself as a Sage Junkie, insists that we wash all the dishes when we get home, which we do until 3 a.m. 

WHAT have we learned here?  As Greg said to me through clenched teeth no less than a dozen times DURING this Thanksgiving fiasco, “We are NEVER doing Thanksgiving anywhere but at our house EVER again.”  We know that the day will come when Thanksgiving will be at one of the kid’s houses instead of ours.  That will be fine.  WE, ourselves, will not do “Meals on Wheels” when it come to Thanksgiving Dinner.  It is, to say the very least, an ill-conceived idea.  BUT we have to admit, it was a Thanksgiving that has not blended into obscurity with other, less memorable, less eventful, less remarkable Holidays.  So there is THAT.