Fred Engle
I remember many Thanksgivings in the Richmond of long ago (for me, 1935-1965). Thanksgiving originally was not an annual holiday and was celebrated only if the President of the United States issued a proclamation. President Franklin Roosevelt tried to change it from the fourth Thursday in November to the third Thursday of November, but the public rose in protest and he changed it back.
In Great Britain, there is a similar celebration in October to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. Food is brought forward and left at the altar in the church. Canadians celebrate a Thanksgiving like us, but they wisely celebrate it in the more temperate month of October.
At Model School, I remember dressing up as pilgrims or Native Americans and re-enacting the first Thanksgiving — as best we could. At first, only Thursday was a school holiday, then Friday was added. At Eastern, the holiday eventually was expanded to three days (Wednesday through Friday) to allow students to travel to and from their homes.
The only community celebration I remember was a joint worship service on Thursday morning. The downtown churches rotated as hosts and their pastors took turns presenting a service. In this venue, Thanksgiving was very much a thank you to God.
At home we enjoyed turkey, lima beans, pumpkin pie, etc. We also had country ham. My father bought them “green” for 50 cents a pound, peppered and seasoned them, and hung them in the basement to cure. With this ham, we enjoyed red eye gravy. My father always kept a large vegetable garden in the summer. My mother would can in season and placed row after row of Ball mason jars in the cool, dark basement. Thus we had a basement full to draw from for Thanksgiving dinner! Woe be unto the lad who dropped one of the glass jars on the way up the steps to the kitchen. My mother also prepared homemade rolls for this occasion. The dough was placed in a large bowl on the mantel so it would rise to perfection.
Football was part of our Thanksgiving tradition even back then. Louisville Male and Louisville Manual always played their ultimate game for city-wide bragging rights on that Thursday. Kentucky and Tennessee also followed this Thanksgiving Thursday tradition. Following football over the radio allows for an exercise in imagination on the part of the audience and a display of vocabulary on the part of the radio announcer that is, sadly, now largely a lost art.
One year when the big game was conducted in Knoxville, a heavy snow came on Thanksgiving Day. All of the returning U.K. fans were funneled up Main Street in Richmond, as U.S. 25 went right through the center of town and the interstate did not exist. Many cars were stuck in the snow here in town. I vividly remember one tractor-trailer truck stuck and spinning its wheels trying to get up our Main Street slope.
With hundreds of motorists stranded, the citizens of Richmond opened their homes and churches and took them in out of the cold. Richmond did well for the stranded fans and they, in turn, had much to be thankful for in the form of helpful Madison County neighbors.
Finally, back in this period, no Christmas merchandise or decorations appeared until after Thanksgiving. Those were the days.
I wish a happy and memorable Thanksgiving to you one and all.
