Tales of Christmas Past

When I was a kid we always went out to the woods near Columbus, woods which were a part of someone’s pasture land, to cut down either a fir or a pine.  I loved these excursions.  We were all together and on the same mission.  My dad would cut down the chosen tree and load it into the horse trailer behind the pickup. [The horse trailer was one he had welded out of pipe.  It was open and small, able to hold two horses.] Then we headed home, and it was always the same; the tree which looked so modest outdoors was always too tall for the living room, even the 11' ceilings we had at the house on Travis.

Decorating it was the next big event.  The lights had to be laid out on the floor and untangled and checked for burnt out bulbs.  Next we had to get the angel on the very top of the tree with a white light inside her (him?).  Then the glass balls, aluminum bells, and a couple antique ornaments (a fragile church and lamp which I still have).

My dad, a serious procrastinator, would wait until what Gram considered “the last minute” to go on the tree expedition.  She loved to decorate and wanted plenty of time for getting things perfect.  I didn’t care.  I loved it.

Here Rests Ike Towell

We moved from the ranch in Bernardo into Columbus, Texas, when I was ten and Lorette was four.  I spent much of my free time exploring and otherwise entertaining myself on my bicycle. 

In a small town in the 1950s, no one worried about kids running away from home or being kidnapped.  No one locked their doors and people often left the keys in their cars, permanently.  Lost keys were not a problem.  Theft was not a problem.  The rule for children was to be home by dark.  Gram had an extra rule which was not to go down by the river because there were bums camping there, but I never could find one.

One of my favorite haunts was the Columbus City Cemetery where Gram and my father are now buried.  Under the live oak trees were civil war veterans, families with a row of infant headstones, familiar local names with graves going back a century or more, and the one most fascinating to me was the headstone of Ike Towell who wrote his own epitaph before he died in 1934.

I have since wondered if Ike Towell's influence helped shape my own religious and political beliefs.  I certainly didn't get these notions from the textbooks approved by the Texas Board of Education which populated not only Texas schools but most of the schools in the country, books which were deadly dull and free of anything even remotely thought-provoking, and in the recent past have completely rewritten American history.

Thanksgiving, magic turkey stuffing, and home made ice cream

Long ago and far, far away (actually early 1970 something in Evanston, Illinois), John and I had Thanksgiving dinner with his fellow graduate student, Jim, and Jim's wife Alice, and other friends, in Jim and Alice's shotgun apartment which was either in Rogers Park (north Chicago) or in Evanston.  At any rate it was not too far from where we lived at 800 Main Street in Evanston.

It was a dark and stormy night (actually just dark and well below freezing) in the Chicago area.  I learned, coming from Texas, that it gets dark VERY early in winter the farther north you go.  When we arrived, we found that Jim and Alice had been cooking both a turkey and magic turkey stuffing in a separate dish in their oven.  They left the magic turkey stuffing in the oven for several hours, the same amount of time as the turkey.  Upon opening the oven, it was discovered that the stuffing was somewhat overcooked.  Actually scorched would be a good descriptor. However, the brave participants in the dinner were unwilling to throw away the magic in the stuffing and thus it was eaten anyway.  We then spent about three hours at the dinner table.  We were moving rather slowly, and there was so little space in the apartment that getting up from the table was a major undertaking, regardless of anyone's mental state.

Someone eventually remembered that homemade ice cream was scheduled for dessert, and the hand crank (non-electric)  ice cream maker was taken out onto the porch so that any spills of salt water would slop over onto the porch.  Jim and Alice's apartment was on the second floor of the building, and their porch was actually the roof over the porch on the first floor.  Practically speaking, this means that the porch sloped toward the street.  Given the time of year, the porch was covered in a thin but nevertheless menacing sheet of ice.  The ice cream makers kept sliding toward the street, but luckily no one tumbled off the porch, and the ice cream was eventually frozen (not too hard given the ambient temperature), and VERY cold ice cream was enjoyed by all.

Oyster and Celery Stuffing

A family recipe contributed by Julia

4 c finely diced celery
2 c boiling water
1/2 c minced onion
1/2 c butter or oil
4 qts lightly packed day old bread cut into 1 inch cubes (20-24 slices)
5 tsp poultry seasoning
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 cans oysters
1/2 lb mushrooms

Simmer celery in boiling water, covered, 20 min. Drain, reserving 1 c liquid.

Saute onions until soft, then add mushrooms and saute until brown.

Mix bread & seasonings, add celery, reserved liquid,  butter, onion+mushrooms.
add oysters (if you want to make stuffing more oyster-ish I would displace some of the celery liquid with the juice from the canned oysters. 

Mix.

Stuff in bird, or put into pan to bake. bake at 350 until warm (usually about 30 minutes).

Gram’s Gravy

“First you make a roux,” Gram’s grandmother Euziere


Turkey fat and drippings
Giblets (chopped and gently sauteed in turkey fat)
Flour
Milk
Liquid smoke
Pepper

1. Remove the turkey from the roasting pan.  The entire gravy process is done over low heat in the turkey roasting pan while stirring constantly.

2. Cook the chopped giblets in the turkey fat.

3. Slowly add flour to the hot turkey fat, giving it time to “cook.”  Stir continuously. Avoid lumps.

4. Add the milk slowly and stir.  The roux will thicken.  Add more milk and repeat this step until you get the volume of gravy you want.

5. Add liquid smoke and pepper.  Some people add salt to taste, but this can be done at the table.

Remember that the gravy also thickens as it cools.

I need to do a YouTube video of this process because I don’t use measurements.