A Thanksgiving a Long Time Ago

My first Thanksgiving away from home (Utah) is one I will always remember. I was 24 years old. Guy and I were living in Laredo, Texas, while he was going through pilot training for the Air Force. Natalie was only a few months old.

The temperature outside was in the 90's; It certainly didn't feel like the Thanksgivings of my childhood. We lived in a trailer at the time. The airconditioning was going full blast to try to keep up with the heat outside.

Here we were, very homesick and far from home. We decided to invite some other couples we had met in Laredo to share our Thanksgiving Day. They all came around noon with their food contributions for the dinner.

I was in charge of cooking the turkey. Well, I had never cooked a turkey in my life. Basically, I just stuck it in the oven. No one had told me I needed to remove the sack inside the turkey containing the neck and other assorted gross parts . Also, no one had told me that I needed a lot of time to defrost the turkey. So, it pretty much went into the oven frozen.

Dinner was supposed to start at 1:00 P.M. Every half hour or so, I would check the turkey to see if it was done. While waiting, we were all feeling the effects of the one window airconditioner we had which tried to combat the heat coming from the oven and outside.

Finally, we all gave up the waiting game and ate a turkey-less Thanksgiving dinner. I think the turkey was finally done around 10:00 that evening. Needless to say, this was a very disappointing Thanksgiving, as well as a pretty embarrassing one!