The First Thanksgiving
November 2, 2010 JerseyGrins
6:00 A.M. October 10th, 1621. Dawn comes slowly, lighting up the fiery maples in my yard. I poke moodily at the dried mud between the logs in my cabin wall. One last sip of water, and it’s time to get cracking. I splash some water on my face and carefully tuck stray wisps of hair into my cap.
6:30 A.M. “Simon, I need those turkeys! The Cavendish’s and Stewart’s are coming this afternoon for our harvest dinner, and there you sit with your pipe! And Eliza Cavendish said she heard from a really reliable source that Massasoit may show up—bringing about ninety of the Wampanoag tribesmen. Good grief! Can you imagine how much they’re going to eat? Simon, I don’t care. I know your musket isn’t as good as James Stewart’s, but you’ll have to deal with it. And see if you can get some swans, geese, and partridges. Massasoit will bring the venison. Really–do I have to do everything around here?”
8:00 A.M. “Jacob and Rebecca, I want you kids to go to the root cellar and load up a peck of onions and three or four cabbages. Oh, and see if you can find the wheat flour and the Indian corn—I think the sacks are in the back left corner. I’m going to whip up a few quarts of furmenty for our dinner. What do you mean, it looks and tastes like library paste? Yes, I know the root cellar is dark and icky. Here—take this candle. Hurry! Help your mother!”
8:20 A.M. “Where are those two kids? Teenagers these days! No sense of work ethic.”
10:00 A.M. “OK, let’s review the menu. We’ll have wild turkeys, venison, swan, partridge, cod, herring, and eel. Check. Thank goodness it all tastes like chicken. Then, I’ll bring out the squash pudding, the dried strawberries, and the furmenty pudding. Check. Oh, and corn on the cob. I don’t want Squanto to show up and get ticked because we’re not having corn. He gets so easily offended….”
11:00 A.M. “Jacob, Rebecca, Nathan, and Ezekiel, I want all of you kids to set up trestle tables outside. And place a grouping of pine cones and a pumpkin on each for decoration. Tilt the pine cones just like this. Well, we can’t have plain tables now, can we? I know, I know–that’s what my neighbor Julia says to me all the time. I don’t know what she means: ‘You are soooooo Martha!’ Who’s Martha, anyway?”
1:00 P.M. “I’m having a fashion crisis. Shall I wear the black dress with the white collar, or the gray dress with the white collar? The white cap with the two tucks in the front, or the white cap with the three pleats? Hmm, let me check my backside. Does this dress make me look fat?”
3:00 P.M. “Welcome, King Massasoit! Oh, how nice of you to bring me a hostess gift. Uh, do fish heads go with pinot noir or chardonnay? I do what with them? Place each one in a mound of dirt with my seeds? What for?”
7:30 P.M. “I can’t believe I ate so much! And look at you, Eliza, so slim and trim. Oh, you’ve been on a diet? Fantastic. What are you doing? Oh, counting carps. I’ll have to think about that and see if it works for me. . . counting carps. Seems simple enough…wait—there are good carps and bad carps?”
8:30 P.M. “What a wonderful day this has been. Eliza, I have a great idea—let’s do this again next year. We could call the celebration ‘Happy Harvest’. You think that sounds stupid? Well, what about ‘The Time of Blessings’? Too long? Ok, how about ‘Thanks Giving’. That has a nice ring to it. Well, happy Thanks Giving, Eliza! Now, let’s get to those mugs and porringers—they won’t wash themselves, you know.”
Entry Filed under: Grins and Giggles, Humor, Uncategorized and tagged: The first Thanksgiving
