The first memory of Thanksgiving is dry turkey. In my younger days we had to go over to my dad’s aunt’s apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. This apartment was an old scary apartment located around 16th and Logan in Denver. The halls were dark and noisy. Echoes would bounce off all the walls and the stairs looked like they came straight out of an inner sanctum movie. Aunt Florence and Aunt Margaret were sisters that lived their older years together, Aunt Florence was a spinster all her life and Aunt Margaret’s husband died at an early age. They had no children. In fact, the only relatives they had in Denver were my dad.
This does not sound like dry turkey, so let me get back to the topic. The turkey was always large, and we were honored with taking lots of leftovers home. Turkey sandwiches for a long time after Thanksgiving. Not being a cook, I can just speculate what the aunts did to make this turkey so dry. I would speculate that they cooked it too long and never basted or turned over the turkey while baking. In fact, the skin of the turkey was like thin leather. Even the wings and drumsticks were dry, dry, dry.
The meal came with the normal fixings, stuffing, it was dry also, potatoes, veggies and gravy. Gravy was the savior of the day. If it wasn’t for gravy this dry turkey would stick in your mouth and make a swallow very difficult. The meal would end up with a dessert. I cannot remember much about the desert so I would say it was not very good or bad, just another desert.
After the dry turkey I remember of going to The Aladdin Theatre for the afternoon matinee. I didn’t make any difference what was playing because my brother and I just wanted to get out of that hot stuffy apartment. Apparently, the weather was mild, and we were allowed to walk home or take the bus. Thinking back now, I am surprised that we were allowed to go home by ourselves because it was quite a distance from East Colfax to where we lived (near Alameda and S. Federal). In those days there wasn’t the fear and dangers that the young generation faces today. I do remember a store walking to the movies that in their front window they had a gigantic ball composed of shoelaces. It must have been close to three feet in diameter. I think the store was a shoe repair place. Every year we could see how the size of this ball would grow.
Don’t get me wrong, I have good memories of Thanksgiving, but this story is about dry turkey and nothing very good can be said about dry turkey.
TomT2.0 