We are in luck! M favorite female curmudgeon, Sharry Lynn Blazier, was in a writing mood yesterday such that she chronicled the tale of her mother and aunts getting a snootful while concocting the best Thanksgiving gravy EVER! So, without further ado, heeeeeere’s Sharry!
1966: The Year of the Really Great Gravy
My childhood memories of family Thanksgivings are pretty much a blur, simply because they all followed the same time-worn traditional pattern: Men watching football in the living room, women cooking in the kitchen.
‘Twas the Golden Age of the Patriarchy, when a man who worked hard every day to earn a living to support his wife and kids got to kick back on a weekday, while their wives, who worked just as hard every day to cook, clean, solo-parent, and otherwise keep a household from descending into slovenly madness, were merely tasked by societal pressure to clean their homes to the brink of immaculateness and make the biggest, fanciest meal of the year.
Yeah, that seems fair.
But there was one year, and it must have been 1966 based on couples that were still together, but wouldn’t be by next November, that stands out in my memory.
It was at Aunt Helen and Uncle Ray’s house down on the south end of town – about as south end as it got, the last house at the end of the block. A few stone’s throws got you to Leitner’s burger joint, which, as far as I was concerned at age just-7, would have been preferable to the ridiculously ornate turkey meal the womenfolk were cooking.
My older cousins were hunkered down doing something or another that was too grown-up and cool for me, so I was the odd duck out as usual, sitting at the kitchen table, maybe doodling or seeming to be reading, taking in all the goings-on.
There were occasional shouts of alternating grief and joy coming from the men in the living room as they watched the Bears game – playing the Lions, I assume? What I mostly knew of the Bears then was they had this player with the funniest name I’d ever heard – Dick Butkus. Dick Butt-kiss!
Meanwhile, I listened to all the women – my mother and three aunts – as they chatted and shared the latest family and local gossip in between turkey bastings, chopping vegetables, and mixing together side dish ingredients. The scents of roasting bird, onions, and celery were thick in the air. All a typical enough scene, until the word “gravy” was spoken.
I really don’t recall which of them brought the bottle of sherry. Something was said about how putting a little sherry in the gravy would really make it fantastic. But they all, including my near-teetotaler mother, proceeded to put more than a little sherry inside themselves. As Aunt Helen had no sherry glasses handy, Dixie Cups sufficed.
A veritable comedy sketch ensued. Getting progressively more tipsy, there was suddenly a lot of giggling and guffawing going on, as unwatched pots boiled over on the stove, and jokes were told about nibbling on giblets that I did not understand but highly suspected were somehow in the same naughty vein as Dick Butt-kisses.
I had never seen my aunts, let alone my mother, MY MOTHER!, behaving like this! The four of them struggled, laughing the entire time, to lift the heavy turkey roaster out of the oven and pour out the juice without the bird sloshing over the side onto the floor — or burning themselves.
Then they were all huddled, like mad scientists in a lab, at the counter as they concocted this newfangled gravy. A little flour, make sure there are no lumps … this seasoning, that seasoning …
“Maybe just another dash of salt?”
“Juuuust a little thicker?”
“I think we need a little more sherry!”
And so another round was poured into the Dixie Cups, not the gravy, as they laughed … and laughed … When they finally agreed the gravy was perfect, it was time to take all the food out to the tables – which they did, stumbling and bumping into each other as they went back and forth to the kitchen.
The game over, or perhaps at halftime, the men started coming to the tables, and soon realized sommmmething had been going on out in the kitchen while they were lost in football. All their wives were drunk.
They shook their heads at the unseemly behavior, and … dug in. Whatever. It was Thanksgiving Dinner!
And, there was the quick and unanimous opinion that this was The Greatest Gravy in History. They had knocked it out of the park.
But when one of the men asked, perhaps suspecting what was in it, one of my aunts said, “We’ll never remember,” and all the women burst into snorks and giggles.
And that was true! Like the cake left out in the rain in “MacArthur Park,” they’d never have that recipe again.
Thanksgiving itself was never the same again, either. A mold was being broken, and I mean the societal kind, not the copper curving fish kind with the fruit and marshmallow-infused Jello in it. Of that particular cast of characters, there were two separations/divorces coming within months, and another after another year. My parents were the only ones who made it to the death-do-us-part distance, and I never saw my mother drink that much again, or touch a single drop of sherry!
In retrospect, I kind of wonder if they knew what was coming, and semi-consciously decided to just have a little fun on that last traditional, strictly gender-roled extended family Thanksgiving; a rebellion of sorts?
I’m glad I was there to witness it.
