Road Apples
Nov. 23, 2009


 Thanksgiving thoughts

By Tim Sanders

Thanksgiving is a very important national holiday. Without it we’d have no idea when to start our Christmas shopping. Here are some Thanksgiving facts that many of today’s youth are probably unfamiliar with:

In late November 1620, the Mayflower dropped anchor in Provincetown Harbor. An expeditionary force of Pilgrims went ashore to tell the Original Native American Inhabitants of God’s love, convert them, and steal their corn. This so annoyed the Original Native American Inhabitants that the Pilgrims took a vote and decided to relocate. They returned to their ship, went looking for a safer harbor, and found one across the bay in Plymouth, where the Native American Inhabitants were not yet familiar with them.

During the following months, there was confusion all around. One of the first English speaking Original Native American Inhabitants the Pilgrims encountered was named either Tisquantum, or Squanto, depending on who you talked to. He was a member of the Patuxet tribe, which was part of the Wampanoag Confederacy. Squanto introduced the Pilgrim fathers and mothers to Massasoit Sachem, also known as Ousamequin, who was the leader of the Pokanoket tribe, which was, or were, also part of the Consolidated Wampanoag Group, Inc. For the next several months Squanto and Massasoit spent most of their time trying to spell their various names, titles, and tribes for the Pilgrims, and also trying to explain that despite what the Pilgrims may have thought, “Indians” lived in India, which was NOT, dammit, anywhere in the vicinity of Massachusetts. They also taught the Pilgrims how to hide their scent by rolling on dead fish, and how to dress turkeys (the hardest part being getting the birds’ feet into those little booties). In return, the Pilgrims gave the Native Americans grammar lessons, smallpox, Daylight Saving Time, and a nasty British dish called Toad-in-the Hole, which consisted of Yorkshire pudding, onion gravy, and diced toad.

There was no Thanksgiving Day celebration until the fall of 1621. By then the colonists were thankful for the Patuxets, the Pokanokets, the Wampanoags, Tisquantums, Sachems, and several other names they couldn’t pronounce. They were also thankful for the corn, the roasted turkeys, the cornbread dressing, the pumpkin pies, the cranberry sauce, the lovely beads and the blankets their Native American friends provided. The Native Americans were thankful that there were only about 50 of the colonists left, and that property values hadn’t dropped precipitously.

So everyone had something to be thankful for on that first Thanksgiving Day, including the fact that due to the availability of large quantities of good, stout ale, the original Thanksgiving Day actually lasted for three days.

There are many other fascinating facts I could relate about Thanksgiving Day, if I only knew them. One thing I do know, however, is that this Thanksgiving we Americans still have many things to be thankful for.


1. This one, for example, comes to us from J&D’s Down Home Enterprises, whose motto is: “Everything should taste like bacon.”

Finally, in these times of economic uncertainty, Justin Esch and David Lefkow, founders of the J&D firm, have given the public what it has been clamoring for. Their Seattle-based company had already provided products like Bacon Salt, Baconnaise, Bacon Popcorn, Bacon Ranch Dressing, and even Bacon (Lip) Balm, but there seemed to be something missing, bacon-wise. Then this November, just in time for Thanksgiving, it came to them. Yes, I refer to Bacon Flavored Envelopes.

J&D’s website now advertises these products, called “Mmmvelopes,” and proudly proclaims that you can purchase 25 bacon-flavored #10 envelopes for just $6.99. To quote the website:

“Technology has given us a lot lately. The car. TV. X-rays. The refrigerator. The Internet. Heck, we even cured polio. But what have our envelopes tasted like for the last 4,000 years? Armpit, that’s what ... No longer will envelopes taste like the underside of your car. You can enjoy the taste of delicious bacon instead.”
This is a landmark product for women who would appreciate a little help from their husbands when bill-paying time rolls around each month. And if the J&D boys can just expand their envelope line to include Christmas cards, there will be another chore the men will be more than happy to tackle. Which is not to say that there won’t be the occasional incident where the little lady comes home from Christmas shopping to find her husband lying on the floor clutching his stomach, covered with a huge pile of half-eaten Mmmvelopes and scrambled eggs. Even the very best ideas have their drawbacks.


2. I’d hoped to offer another example of thankfulness–this one involving a lady named Selma Wilcox from Foley, Alabama. Mrs. Wilcox, as I understand it, was an 89-year-old who, for the last few months of her life, carried a shoe box with her everywhere she went. The box had several holes in the top, and she told her friends and neighbors that the holes were for ventilation for her teacup Chihuahua, Hal, which she referred to as a “Mexican Hairless.” When asked why she kept Hal in a box, she explained that the light hurt his eyes and people frightened him.

At any rate, on the 15th of October, Mrs. Wilcox had a stroke while attempting to program her DVR to record an episode of Oprah. While she was in the hospital her neighbor went to the Wilcox home to fetch a nightgown, heard some scratching from the shoe box in the kitchen, and opened it.

There was no Chihuahua inside, only a very large Palmetto bug surrounded by several broken dog biscuits. When the giant roach flew onto the neighbor lady’s blouse, she panicked, thinking it was a rabid, flying Chihuahua. She slapped Hal to the floor and stomped him into tiny roach pieces, just to make sure he didn’t fly anywhere else.

I’d planned on using that last little story as a moral lesson, teaching how those of us who can afford normal dogs, dogs without wings and compound eyes, should give thanks. But since I couldn’t confirm all the details, I decided to leave the moralizing to others.