For the earliest Thanksgivings I can recall, in the early to mid fifties, dinner was set on a squarish table, perhaps initially a card table, later a kitchen table with metal legs, then around 1960 a maple drop leaf table, followed by a custom built table that covered a large expanse of the eat-in kitchen, with a more formal but not as large table in the dining room off the kitchen. As the family grew, from me, to Bob and Dan, to Kathy, Mary, and Chrissy, to Jim, Susan and Sharon, to spouses, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, the Thanksgiving table of course had to continue expanding, multiplying, and tri-locating to several rooms in the Davis Avenue house built by Mom and Dad in 1963 and inhabited until the fall of 2011.
Later Thanksgivings evolved to include:
- Turkey cookies, using Grandma Wolinski’s sugar cooky recipe, frosted in bright colors. (Now made for their families by my daughter and my nieces.)
- A grapefruit centerpiece arrayed with toothpicks holding pieces of Vienna sausage, cheese, and olives
- A pineapple centerpiece contrived to resemble a turkey, with felt head and feathers
- Turkeys cut from canned jellied cranberry sauce, using Mom’s aluminum turkey cooky cutter
- Gherkins and olives in a slender glass dish, a favorite of Dad’s.
- Devilled eggs.
- Mom’s homemade bread, made using Grandma Wolinski’s recipe and served on a wooden cutting board.
- “Heavenly hash” – Canned fruit cocktail and marshmallows, with whipped cream.
- Pumpkin pie.
- Chocolate cream pie.
And Thanksgiving afternoon, generally after dinner, was our official kick-off for listening to Christmas carols. (Football kick-offs not so much. Dad was not a fan.) I can recall some 78’s owned by Mom and Dad, though I’m not sure what was on them. But I think the Christmas records I remember, and can still hear clearly in my head, were 33 and a third's. The Robert Shaw Chorale, Nat King Cole, Mantovani – at least for my first ten or eleven years, there were only a handful. These were the sounds of Christmas.
Also after dinner, there would be some new coloring books, punch out books, and dot to dots. In later years, perhaps a Christmas jigsaw to share.