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Show THE THUNDERBIRD MONDAY DECEMBER 1, 1986 PAGE COOPOM' .. Save TIME and MONEY drying Use our WATER - This year: Thanks for Thanksgiving This year, amazingly enough, Thanksgiving has not left me full of sour memories of a holiday feast gone seriously awry. As a matter of fact, the whole experience was actually fairly pleasant this year. In brief, went to Las Vegas with my girlfriend, stayed with her family, and ate a gluttonous amount of food. Except for a very minor incident with an electric carving knife (something I've come to expect every year, no matter where am), things went surprisingly well, and no one went away mad or hungry. This year was nice. This year was an exception. don't know why, but for some reason Thanksgiving has usually wound up turning to an excursion in horror and madness for me. Take last year, for instance. What a nightmare. It all started when a friend's mother invited me to join them for Thanksgiving dinner, and like a fool, accepted not knowing that was going to be surrounded by all of their weird relatives and lunatic friends. The celebration got off to a swell start when someone's little nephew knocked a lamp through the t.v. screen and nearly caused grandma to have heart failure at the resulting explosion. Later, things really started to swing when the turkey was torn to shreds by a pack of savage dogs after it had been burned beyond recognition and accidentally thrown through a plate glass window when our hostess tripped while carrying it. The evening came to a splendid conclusion when several party guests nearly went blind from drinking holiday punch and finally wound up crawling around on the floor mewling like kittens, or fencing with each other using serving implements as swords. In retrospect, think it was probably the damned holiday punch that was the root of our problems that evening. It was brutal stuff, and if we had known in advance that the recipe for the stuff called for one quart of rum, one quart of vodka, one pint of tequilla, and a cup of paint thinner, we probably would not have been slugging the stuff down like it was Kool-AiBut speaking of recipes, why is it that around this time of year mothers, aunts, and grandmothers seem to lose their minds and start dragging out all of the Old Family Recipes for all varieties of twisted holiday foods? And why is it that all of these old recipes seem to contain turkey innards in one form or another? still have nightmares about my Aunt Regina's infamous "Holiday Pudding," which consisted of mashed up candied yams, raisins, giblets (a kind word for 'guts'), petrified green cherries, and shaved carrots all swirled together in a bonding mixture of whipped cream. was very young at the time, but still remember that the stuff tasted the way always would. imagined toe-jathink my biggest mistake that year was telling my aunt that liked it, so wouldn't hurt her feelings. regretted that little "white lie" for many years afterward, because it gave her all the excuse she that hellish pudding on a regular basis insisting needed to that she was "making it special just for me." Oh boy. The horrors of Thanksgiving foods are not limited to just obscure "traditional" foods are every family recipes though. Many bit as loathsome as anything Granny could dredge up from the days of her ancestors. Perhaps the two most hideous of these traditional foods are pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie. Everything about pumpkin pie is wrong: It looks wrong, it tastes wrong, its texture is completely wrong, and it tastes the way plastic being cut smells. The only way can eat the stuff is to take a tiny bite, then spray half a can of pressurized whipped cream directly into my mouth. As for mincemeat pie. ..well, I'd rather not even think about it. don't even know what "mincemeat" is. Is it really meat? Is it chewed up raisins or figs? Or is it sweetened bat guano? don't know. don't want to know. Just keep it away. Perhaps what made this Thanksgiving so pleasant is the fact that no one made me eat anything didn't want to eat. For that am thankful. Because of this act of kindness, have survived one more holiday. Now, if can only avoid Aunt Regina when go home for Christmas, may actually make it to 1987. I EXTRACTOR Raindance FULL SERVICE LAUNDROMAT 430 South Main Street, Cedar City, Utah 84720. 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