The Thanksgiving of the Sledgehammer

Last weekend was Sophomore Retreat. I took some very nice pictures; unfortunately they have not made it off of my camera. They took us to this resort about half an hour away from Beloit, and we spent Friday afternoon and Saturday morning hanging out with other sophomores, talking about Beloit, and discussing our future plans. It was nice to get away.

I am really excited for Thanksgiving! I think it is sad how the technical holiday is practically celebrating the eventual demise of the Native Americans, but my family is very much into the “thanks” part of the holiday and not so hot on the history. Whatever the case, I love sitting around a huge table with family and friends, eating a big long meal and talking. My family has some pretty amazing holiday stories, which get repeated every year, here is my favorite…

Three years ago we started the thanksgiving preparations as usual. My stepfather (Larry) went off to pick up our free range organic turkey from the Regent Street Market while my mother stayed at home to start on the mashed potatoes and pies. When Larry returned my mother took the turkey out of the box only to discover it was missing some key parts, including one of the wings. Everyone knows you can’t cook a turkey with one wing (actually, I didn’t. apparently you need both wings to prop it up or something), so it was back to Regent Street to try and get a new turkey. After some heated words with the 17 year old guy behind the counter, we got a new and improved turkey.

Upon returning home we left the turkey to chill in the garage, as it wouldn’t fit in our fridge, and continued the usual preparations. Soon, we heard a scratching and shuffling noise coming from the garage. When we opened the door, we saw a huge raccoon tying to steal our turkey! We fended off the raccoon (with the help of my courageous cat), and took the turkey in to prepare it.
After doing whatever one does to prepare a turkey, we tried to stick it in the oven. Apparently the beautiful new roasting pan Larry had purchased earlier that day did not fit in to the oven! At this point it was a little late to just go out and buy a new roasting pan, so Larry took it into the garage. We heard a few bangs, and Larry came back into the house with a smaller (and slightly dented) roasting pan, then went to put away the sledge hammer.

The next day everything looked great…except one of the pies. The pie was actually beautiful, but that was the problem. See, my mother makes wonderful TASTING pies, but they usually look kind of ugly. When a pie looks pretty, we get kind of worried. Luckily, there was more then one pie and the other ones looked really ugly.

Well, that is the best thanksgiving story I got….happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it, have a good week to all those who don’t!