Vacation plus Moving Time!

Dear Blog Readers,

Please Note:

I will be offline for about a week and half due to feasts, giving thanks, family, and physically moving all my household goods 695 miles from Oakland, California to Portland, Oregon. Pacific Northwest here I come!!!! HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

I published this true Thanksgiving story a few years ago here--however, since it is my very favorite Thanksgiving story --- I have decided to repeat it this year for all my new blog readers....

An ALASKAN HALIBUT THANKSGIVING

One year in the small Alaskan fishing town where I lived the turkeys and trimmings failed to arrive. Since we lacked a grocery store that sold meat of any kind (except canned) everyone in town had placed their Thanksgiving dinner order with the grocery store in the next larger town (Sitka) to arrive the Tuesday before Thanksgiving on the mailplane. That year a thick fog came up which lasted for days, preventing the mailplane--a small floatplane that navigated by sight---from arriving and delivering everyone's Thanksgiving dinner orders. Needless to say, this turn of events caused much disappointment around town--but you can't argue with Mother Nature who controlled the weather (and thus much of the time our lives.)

What were we to do? Everyone busily checked their pantries and hauled out the home canned salmon and some of the more enterprising folks went out hunting for deer ( but had no luck).

Later that day, an announcement came over the CB's (we all had CB radios in our homes--tuned to the same channel for inter-town communication, since we had no telephones at all)---"I just landed a 180 pound halibut--so just come on down to the dock and get your portion for your Thanksgiving dinner." Everyone in town converged on the dock--where the fisherman was cutting up huge chunks of fresh caught halibut to share with everyone; soon a bottle of rum appeared, then some beer, then some local smoked salmon and homemade bread and other food and we proceeded to have an impromptu before-Thanksgiving-day party on the dock as the fish was passed out. We toasted the fisherman, the ocean which provided our dinner, and each other.

So on that Thanksgiving day everyone in town sat down to a scrumptious halibut dinner and all gave proper thanks to the sea which provided our livelihood and our food, to the fisherman who caught our dinner, and to all our family and neighbors with whom we were sharing this meal in our community hall. After eating, we moved aside the tables, the musicians began to play some lively music and we had a Thanksgiving dance....then the party lasted until the wee hours.

Two days later the mailplane finally arrived and everyone cooked their turkey and trimmings and sat down to another Thanksgiving dinner---but the whole town agreed that the previous Halibut Thanksgiving was the best one the town ever had.




Quote for the Day:

[I give thanks....]

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson