A Traditional Meal

Growing up my family never made a fuss around Thanksgiving. My mother was first generation American born and her mother never celebrated the holiday with special food.

 My father had no sense of smell and my mother really didn't care about cooking since everything tasted the same to my father. Given that and her lack of interest in cooking made meals quite predictable. They always included a vegetable, fruit, meat or chicken and potato or rice. The vegetables were either carrots, peas or string beans—the fruits came from a can and the meat was usually overcooked. No one could accuse my mother of ever undercooking anything. All meals began with a salad—lettuce, tomato and cucumber and usually ended with a mixed fruit medley.

In my sophomore year in high school my friend Muriel and I realized that neither of us had ever had a traditional Thanksgiving meal—that is one with all the fixings. Muriel was the first in her family to be born in the United States. Her mother didn't have a recipe box filled with family recipes for sweet potato casserole or cranberry relish. She did create marvelous Hungarian dishes.

So with the permission of our parents we went into Manhattan on Thanksgiving Day—not to see the parade, but to find a place that served a traditional meal. Given that neither of us had too much money we headed for a place that didn't spend too much time or money on decor.

I remember the place—a cafeteria with a sign advertising a full course meal for an extremely reasonable sum . We stood on line, took a plate and followed two men who seemed to know how the whole thing worked. We handed our plate to the server who doled out turkey, gravy, vegetables from large metal pans. and all the usual fixings. At the very end we received a roll and a choice of pumpkin or apple pie. Except for the dessert everything fit on our plate.

Save for the two of us everyone was older and most of the people were alone. We found two seats at a small table for four and soon two women joined our table.

"We're like a family," said one of the women.

She told us about growing up in the midwest and the family Thanksgiving.
"This stuffing is nothing like my mother made. She put raisins inside."

It took us awhile to realize that most of our eating companions were quite poor and lonely on this holiday. After listening to several stories of past Thanksgivings we said the meal tasted great because we had never had all the fixings before.

"This," said Muriel, "is my first American Thanksgiving meal. My mother makes the best goulash, but she doesn't know how to make these dishes."

"What pie did you get?"
"Apple pie," I said.

Tom who had been dishing out the food said, "You got to try the pumpkin pie." and he brought over an entire pumpkin pie to share with the table.

I think her name was Polly. She joined us and before we cut the pie said, "When I was a kid we always said grace before eating."

"We already ate," said one of the women.

"No matter." and with those words she bowed her head and we all followed.

"Lord," she said. "Thank you for this wonderful Thanksgiving."

One of the other women added, "This was like a family sitting down to eat together."

Murieland I added Amens.