Branch Come Home Year

August 9-19, 2007

Our First Turkey

Submitted By: Marina (Power) Gambin

 

Text Box: In the 50s and early 60s, Christmas in outport Newfoundland was much different from what it is today. Recently, I told my granddaughter about the absence of electricity in Branch when I grew up there. “But, how did you plug in your Christmas tree?” was her concerned question. Laughingly, I informed her that the spectacles of flashing Santas, blinking reindeer and neon-coloured twinkling lights were unknown to me before I left home in 1964. The amenities of anything electric did not reach that part of St. Mary’s Bay until 1965. As she eyed me sympathetically, I hurried to assure her that we always had a Christmas tree and Santa Claus visited us faithfully. When she inquired, “Did you have a turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce?” I took advantage of the chance to tell one of my Christmas experiences of bygone days. The episode I related to her occurred the first year we had turkey for Christmas dinner. Before that year, our holiday fare was either mutton, chicken or beef, all of which were obtained locally. To the best of my knowledge, turkeys were never raised in Branch. As I remember, this fine feathered fowl was introduced to our family table when I was about 14 or 15. Our parents attended a “fancy fair” just before Christmas and Daddy won one on the wheel of fortune or on bingo. The turkey, of course, was delicious and set a precedent for future holidays. That same year, my sister Jean and I were out on Christmas night mummering, visiting and taking in some kitchen parties as adolescents did. When we arrived home tired, hungry and late, everyone had gone to bed. Knowing that there had been lots of leftovers, we decided to satisfy our appetites with turkey and tea before we retired for the night. We had the leftover turkey laid out on the kitchen table when Jean heard a group of our male peers out in the lane trying to get our attention. Although the hour was late, we hurried outside and spent an hour or more laughing, joking and trading local gossip. By the time the boys went home, we were really hungry and went in to devour some turkey. To our utter consternation, our two cats, Tom and Smoky, had their own plans for the unguarded bird. They already had the carcass down on the floor and were just getting ready to feast to their hearts’ delight. Well, the poor cats! Jean attacked one with the broom and I grabbed the mop to the other. We opened the porch door and sent the startled animals flying across the graveled yard. You’d think the whole event was their fault and not ours for leaving the plate of food unattended. To make a long story short, we picked up the turkey, cleaned it off the best we could, put it back in a covered pot and went to bed. The next day, when we saw other members of the family partaking of the turkey, we never uttered a word about the fiasco with the cats. We decided that what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. We let them enjoy the turkey while we opted for baloney or something less special, and thank God, nobody came down with any mysterious illnesses. Mommy did give the two hungry cats the remains of the turkey, but only Jean and I knew why they looked so nervous eating it.