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.