An Alaskan Thanksgiving Story

One year in our small remote fishing village on an Alaskan island we had a special surprise Thanksgiving. As usual, everyone had ordered their turkeys with all the trimmings from the big grocery store in the nearby town (well, it was 125 miles away--but accessible from our village only by boat or small float plane--no roads) to arrive on the weekly Tuesday mail plane right before Thanksgiving (on Thursday). Because the mail plane was a small float plane that landed on the water, whether it arrived on the scheduled day depended entirely on the weather conditions. On Monday a big storm blew up, so no mail plane on Tuesday, then no mail plane on Wednesday either---it was the talk of the town--what we were going to do without our Thanksgiving turkeys?

Then Wednesday evening, over the local CB radio network (we all had CB radios in our homes--since there was no telephone system for the community) came a call,"Everyone come on down to the dock and get your Thanksgiving halibut." One of the fishermen in town had gone out on the straits and jigged up a 200 # halibut--more than enough for everyone in town. We all happily tramped down to his boat at the dock--where an impromptu dock party had sprung up--as the fisherman merrily filleted and handed out big chunks of fresh halibut, we visited and laughed and soon a bottle of brandy made the rounds. Needless to say, the next day--Thanksgiving--we all had halibut for our big dinner, with many a "thank you" said to the ocean for yielding us the fish and the fisherman for catching it. Everyone agreed that this fish dinner tasted especially good.

When the mail plane finally arrived--on Saturday--everyone in town sat down to turkey dinners--3 days after Thanksgiving, and we all gave thanks a second time for our abundance, and blessed the mail plane for finally arriving!