We Gave Thanks Prairie Style

Story ID:	1159
Written by:	Gail Lee Martin
Organization:	Kansas Authors Club
Story type:	In Memory
Writers Conference:	My Favorite Holiday Story
Location:	Teterville area Kansas USA
Year:	1930
Person:	my parent Clarence & Ruth McGhee

We Gave Thanks Prairie Style

Webster’s dictionary defines thanksgiving “as the act of giving thanks, when capitalized: is the fourth Thursday in November observed as a legal holiday for giving thanks for divine goodness.” My mother truly believed in living that definition. Thanksgiving at our home on the prairies of central Kansas was celebrated with sharing the divine goodness my parents received from nature’s bounty and their own labor in a Thanksgiving feast fit for royalty. I remember mother’s menu for thanksgiving looked like this:
Roast hen and sage dressing
Giblet gravy and mashed potatoes
Green beans with tiny winter onions
Deviled eggs
Candied sweet potatoes
Sweet pickled beets
Sweet, dill and bread and butter pickles
Pumpkin pies with whipped cream
Gooseberry pies
Blackberry cobbler with thick cream
Hot rolls and butter
Sand plum and elderberry jelly
Coffee and milk

This meal was very colorful, nutritious, and certainly appetizing. Granted we had some of the same food year-round but never all set out at one time on a snowy white tablecloth and with mother’s best dishes.

My folks planned for this occasion all year long, which made it such a special event. Even in the barren Flint Hills there were small spring-fed creeks that had a bit of good bottom ground where Daddy could plant a garden. As early as January Daddy would be browsing through Henry Field or Burpee’s seed catalogs with thoughts of pumpkin pies dancing in his head. Sometimes the pumpkins didn’t produce because squash bugs would do them under or the dry, hot Kansas winds would just kill the plants. But that never stopped us from having pumpkin pies. Mother would use carrots or sweet potatoes and her spices and make the same luscious pumpkin tasting pies. As I browse through the current Burpee’s catalog it is hard to imagine they’ve been around since the 1890s.

Early each spring my daddy would get a hundred baby chicks at the feed store in Eureka and raise them in a small poultry house. My folks liked the Rhode Island Red or New Hampshire breeds because they were a heavier chicken and I liked them because they laid beautiful brown eggs. Later in the summer when they grew big enough we would start eating the cockerels. Fried chicken every day was great but by fall we needed a change. Each year Mother would pick out the healthiest pullets to save for layers. When they started laying eggs we would began culling out the old last’s years fat hens for roasting or to boil for noodles. Thus a whole year went by to provide the meat dish for our feast.

We usually would catch the chicken we wanted to cook before turning them out to range for grasshoppers each morning. If we forgot I would try to catch one by the leg with a long wire hook that Daddy had made for that purpose. Sometimes it would take me awhile to catch one. I would throw out a handful of feed and then creep up on them like a I imagined Indians used to do.

Mother was one of the few women I knew that could wring the chicken’s head off with just a sharp twist of the wrist that made the body swing around until it parted from the head. The chicken was then dunked in a bucket full of boiling water to scald the feathers for easier removal. I can still recall the smell of burning feathers when Mother seared the plucked chicken to remove the small pin-feathers.

I remember one year we had a big snow storm just before Thanksgiving. After the storm quit Daddy and I went rabbit hunting out on the prairie and had such good luck we had roast rabbit instead of chicken to be thankful for. I don’t remember anyone complaining.

Wild gooseberries for the pies were found growing along the Cottonwood River near Matfield Green. Picking the plump, green berries was quite dangerous I thought. The wild bushes were very thorny and everybody would collect a lot of scratches along with the berries. Back home the gooseberries had to be stemmed to remove the dried brown blossom ends then cooked with sugar. Mother put them in canning jars and then in a boiling water bath to preserve them for winter use in sauce or pies.

The jelly making started when the sand plums in the creek bottoms ripened. Even we kids got into the act picking the rosy red plums while watching out for rattlesnakes. At least we weren’t bothered with thorns this time. Mother cooked the washed plums until the juice could be drained from the fruit. Elderberries were handled the same way except I remember having to wash the ‘stink bugs’ from them.

Mother found another use for elderberries only it was using the blossoms. The plant bloomed with tiny white blossoms in a bunch as big around as a dinner plate. We picked, washed and dipped them into pancake batter then they were fried like donuts. Mother must have had trouble making elderberry jelly like I do. Sometimes it was too thick but when it came out too thin, Mother canned it anyway. That too thin jelly made great syrup and was so good on the elderberry blossom fritters.

Mother’s delicious blackberry cobbler came the same hard way. Blackberries seemed to ripen in the hottest time of the year and the wild variety had thorns that tried to outdo the gooseberries. These berries were preserved in canning jars also because there was no electricity so no freezers back then. The wonderful taste of warm cobbler covered with thick, golden cream poured from Mother’s squat, dark blue pitcher makes me wish for ’the good old days.’

Our cream, whipped cream, milk, cottage cheese and butter were by-products from our one Jersey milk cow, making her a family treasure even if she had to be milked each morning and night. Daddy did the milking but Mother strained the milk through a cloth into large round crocks. Later the cream would rise to the top and was carefully skimmed and saved for cereal and deserts. When the cream soured it was stored in a Daisy hand cranked glass churn to be made into butter when Mother thought the temperature was just right. Mother’s green painted kitchen cabinet with the big flour bin handy in front, was the center of the Thanksgiving preparations and her wooden rolling pin did double duty if we had chicken and noodles on the menu. In a prayer of thanks Daddy let us know how truly we should be thankful to set down to such a feast of divine goodness.

This Thanksgiving I’ll let my husband roast a grocery store turkey and our daughter, Susan will bake a spiral ham. The rest of the children and their families will bring a plentiful supply of goodies, many never even thought of in the olden days and about all I’ll do is make the giblet gravy and sage dressing. Then I’ll enjoy the food and visiting while giving thanks for dishwashers.