Scooter, Cujo and The Rev
By Joe Acton
Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that never made any sense to me. Not even a little bit.
First of all, I never saw anybody dressed up like a pilgrim and I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed somebody wandering around in an ugly brown outfit with square-toed black shoes wearing a wastepaper basket for a hat. Outfits like that kinda tend to stand out in a crowd.
Then, everybody's busy committing turkey-cide all over the place when the pilgrims never even saw a turkey for Thanksgiving — they ate fish and eel. Yep, you heard it first here — no turkey, but a very nice piece of stuffed eel. And your basic corn on the cob. Which, in honor of, I suppose, my mom always creamed.
But then during the holiday season mom creamed everything in sight. We had creamed corn. Creamed peas. Creamed onions. Creamed string beans. She even creamed some spuds one year and tried to tell us it was some new-fangled dish called scalloped potatoes. No way, pal. I can spot a creamed vegetable a mile away. Rule: if it looks like a creamed vegetable, sticks in your throat like a creamed vegetable and is sticky like creamed vegetable, it might be an albino titmouse, but the smart money is on a creamed vegetable.
So there I was. Fourteen years old and getting ready to sit down to another CREAMED THANKSGIVING DINNER FOR WHICH I WASN'T PARTICULARLY THANKFUL BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN SIGHT EXCEPT THE NEW REVEREND, HIS WIFE AND THE TURKEY HAD BEEN CREAMED BY MY MOM.
Yup. My mom, in a particularly acute fit of neighborly altruism, invited the Brand New Never Been Thrown Off Anybody's Property Yet reverend and his wife (who she'd just met at the general store) to Thanksgiving dinner. Dad called them, "Mr. and Mrs. Rev."
The Rev was so new to Alaska that he'd washed his car the day before Thanksgiving and parked it outside his house that night. Took him two (2) butane bottles to thaw out the locks enough for the keys to work and another hour of running the defroster to clear the skating rink off his windshield.
Anyhow, mom invited The Revs to dinner which really spun my dad's jaws down tight because the reverend was Southern Baptist, didn't drink booze and had been raised in Texas.
Dad could recognize a church two out three times but that was about it, swore up and down that alcohol was considered a major food group when consumed with any meal, and thought Santa Ana and his army stopped way short of doing the United States a big favor when they didn't kill every Texan within ICBM range of the Alamo.
Now before I go any farther, I'd better tell you about the two others who were at the scene of "The Dinner When Your Father Made A Big Horse's Ass Out Of Himself And Embarrassed Me To Tears", as my mother would refer to it until her dying day.
First there was Leader, my trusty MacKenzie River Husky, half timber wolf, half husky. To say Leader was a big dog is to say Dolly Parton is well endowed. I mean we're talking enormous here. When I was twelve I could sit on his back and my feet wouldn't touch the ground. If you wanted to go hunting for bear, you'd take Leader and just to be fair, give the bear a head start and a twelve-gauge shotgun.
Then there was Scooter — the family parakeet. Now Scooter came to be a member of the family, ironically enough, on a Thanksgiving day about eight years previous. Mom and dad were broke that year — a perennial condition around our house when I was growing up — and mom told dad to go out and get a bird for Thanksgiving.
Well, dad stopped into the local watering hole and had a long conference with two very close friends, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Imperial, for the better part of the afternoon. Then he went out, just like mom told him, and got a bird for Thanksgiving. Scooter. Actually, the family legend was that dad won Scooter in a friendly crap game in the back of said watering hole, but mom would never discuss it and dad would only smile.
Now the important thing to know about Scooter was that he used to fly around the house all the time because dad would leave his cage door open. This drove our cat, Pistol, absolutely nuts. She was a mangy old alley cat with one eye (she lost the other chasing a bird in the attic — ran into a nail. Yuck, is right.) and an even disposition: mean all the time.
So there we were: Ward and June Cleaver; little Joey; the cat, Pistol; the dog, Leader; and the bird, Scooter. The All American Thanksgiving family setting, right? Well, except that June was already mad at Ward because he'd had a couple of belts "before the religious floor show arrives" — as he put it — and little Joey was whining about having to wear a suit and hat that made him look like Elliot Ness's grandson.
Now add to that your basic garden variety teetotaling fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist reverend complete with a King James version under one arm and his Southern Belle bride on the other, and you've got yourself the makings for a USDA Prime Cut disaster looking for a place to happen. And it happened right after dad said grace.
We all sat down, dad at the head of the table, mom at the other end and with The Revs. poised for a group attack on the other side of the table from me.
Mom says, "Homer, will you do the honors of saying grace?"
By now dad was working on his fourth Highball, which he was hiding in the bathroom medicine cabinet.
"Of course, dear," he said. And we all bowed our heads in solemn prayer to hear dad offer grace.
"Grace, now let's eat." Short. Simple. Not very elegant, I'll grant you, but you had to admit, the guy was seldom misunderstood.
You could see the steam roll out of my mom's ears, but by that time dad was up carving the turkey. Which is when Scooter started making low passes over the table and Leader started to howl.
Now, Scooter used to do that — fly around the table at dinner time and land on dad's shoulder. He'd give dad a kiss and dad would give him something off his plate. Sure, it was a little odd but it wasn't like we had a pet buzzard or something. Meanwhile, every time the bird started flying around the table, Leader would start howling because he knew the bird was going to get fed which meant he ought to get something too.
So picture this: you're a newly married Southern Belle spending your first winter in the God-forsaken reaches of Alaska. You've married a preacher so stupid he moves to Alaska in the winter and washes his car in a blizzard until it turns into a giant ice cube. Then you get invited over to some lunatic's house for Thanksgiving dinner who gives a single mono-syllabic offering to the god you've devoted your entire life to, and whose equally lunatic family then arms him with various sharp weapons to start a ritualistic if not satanic dismemberment of one of God Creatures. And just about the time you thought it couldn't get any worse, a blue and yellow bird starts making bombing runs on the table, while a creature that could eat Cujo for breakfast is sitting in the corner howling straight up at the ceiling. Yep, just your average everyday Alaskan Thanksgiving dinner, alright.
Well, for the Actons, this was just business as usual. No big deal, the bird will land any minute, the howling will die down shortly thereafter and with any luck at all the cat won't leap onto dad's back trying to eat the bird like it did last week. But then luck is not something the Acton's were greatly endowed with. Not good luck anyway.
Scooter always made two passes over the table before he went on final approach but on this particular day he must have been distracted by the additional ground personnel near the tower because he missed dad's shoulder by a country mile. Overshot it straight into the gravy bowl.
If you didn't know better you might have thought that Scooter's navigation wasn't half bad because it almost looked like he meant to land on the edge of the gravy bowl — except we all knew he didn't like gravy.
His little feet hit the side of the gravy bowl at about Mach 2 which caused him to do a ground loop and dive head first into the gravy, waist deep — feet and tail feathers pointing straight up.
No time for polite conversation, we got a landing emergency on the field.
Dad grabs the bird out of the hot steaming gravy, burns his hand, throws the bird to the floor and shouts an expletive that would lead the casual observer to understand that not only did the bird come from questionable parentage, but that the bowl was indeed condemned for all eternity to the fires of Hell.
The Reverend's wife gasped and choked on a piece of roll she had in her mouth. Mom jumped up and yelled, "Homer, watch your --- damn mouth!" to which dad shouts back, "Can't Edna, gotta go to the can and wash my -- damn bird off." Meanwhile the Reverend is beating his wife on the back and I fell off my chair onto the floor laughing hysterically.
By this time things were happening pretty fast and I'll admit to being a little theatrical in actually falling off the chair. But it seemed like the right thing to do at the time, considering everything else. I mean how often are you going to get a chance to fall off your chair laughing in front of company at the dinner table and get away with it?
Well, the answer is that you can't get away with it if you're too stupid to live and pull the tablecloth off with you as you go down and all the plates and food and drinks and glasses and silverware and napkins and coffee cups and saucers and sugar and everything else in the known world falls onto the floor for the Marauding Cujo to start wolfing down. Which he did. Immediately.
Being part wolf, Leader knew a feast when saw one and also knew this was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity. So he ate everything he could get his mouth around. Including two napkins which he promptly threw back up along a couple of pares.
Have you ever seen a dog in a feeding frenzy? Every time he'd go to swallow something he'd throw his head up in the air and hit it on the underside of the table, which by that time we were both under in what looked like earthquake debris. So while The Rev is performing the Heimlich maneuver on his wife, you heard a "slurp slurp thump rattle rattle — slurp slurp thump rattle rattle" as Leader ate, hit his head on the table, rattled the remaining silverware and then started all over again.
By this time, dad was in the bathroom plunging a par-boiled Scooter in and out of the toilet bowl like a plumber's helper, trying to wash off a heavy coat of giblet gravy, while shouting for someone to bring him a " --- damn towel to dry this --- damn bird off with."
Well, the dinner party broke up right after Mrs. Rev got her breath back. Leader was a pretty happy boy and as they left managed to wipe his mouth off on Mr. Revs pants leg. Pistol got most of what was left of the Turkey and I went over to Buzzy Thistle's house to tell him how to plan a perfect dinner party. Scooter looked like The Swamp Thing propped up in the corner of his bird cage blinking his eyes about twice a minute and mom didn't talk to dad for the rest of the week. And we never did see The Revs again which was just fine by dad since they "didn't even stay to help clean up or do the dishes or a damn thing."
Yep, just your garden variety nothin' special Alaskan Thanksgiving dinner.
Hope yours goes as well.
By Joe Acton
Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that never made any sense to me. Not even a little bit.
First of all, I never saw anybody dressed up like a pilgrim and I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed somebody wandering around in an ugly brown outfit with square-toed black shoes wearing a wastepaper basket for a hat. Outfits like that kinda tend to stand out in a crowd.
Then, everybody's busy committing turkey-cide all over the place when the pilgrims never even saw a turkey for Thanksgiving — they ate fish and eel. Yep, you heard it first here — no turkey, but a very nice piece of stuffed eel. And your basic corn on the cob. Which, in honor of, I suppose, my mom always creamed.
But then during the holiday season mom creamed everything in sight. We had creamed corn. Creamed peas. Creamed onions. Creamed string beans. She even creamed some spuds one year and tried to tell us it was some new-fangled dish called scalloped potatoes. No way, pal. I can spot a creamed vegetable a mile away. Rule: if it looks like a creamed vegetable, sticks in your throat like a creamed vegetable and is sticky like creamed vegetable, it might be an albino titmouse, but the smart money is on a creamed vegetable.
So there I was. Fourteen years old and getting ready to sit down to another CREAMED THANKSGIVING DINNER FOR WHICH I WASN'T PARTICULARLY THANKFUL BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN SIGHT EXCEPT THE NEW REVEREND, HIS WIFE AND THE TURKEY HAD BEEN CREAMED BY MY MOM.
Yup. My mom, in a particularly acute fit of neighborly altruism, invited the Brand New Never Been Thrown Off Anybody's Property Yet reverend and his wife (who she'd just met at the general store) to Thanksgiving dinner. Dad called them, "Mr. and Mrs. Rev."
The Rev was so new to Alaska that he'd washed his car the day before Thanksgiving and parked it outside his house that night. Took him two (2) butane bottles to thaw out the locks enough for the keys to work and another hour of running the defroster to clear the skating rink off his windshield.
Anyhow, mom invited The Revs to dinner which really spun my dad's jaws down tight because the reverend was Southern Baptist, didn't drink booze and had been raised in Texas.
Dad could recognize a church two out three times but that was about it, swore up and down that alcohol was considered a major food group when consumed with any meal, and thought Santa Ana and his army stopped way short of doing the United States a big favor when they didn't kill every Texan within ICBM range of the Alamo.
Now before I go any farther, I'd better tell you about the two others who were at the scene of "The Dinner When Your Father Made A Big Horse's Ass Out Of Himself And Embarrassed Me To Tears", as my mother would refer to it until her dying day.
First there was Leader, my trusty MacKenzie River Husky, half timber wolf, half husky. To say Leader was a big dog is to say Dolly Parton is well endowed. I mean we're talking enormous here. When I was twelve I could sit on his back and my feet wouldn't touch the ground. If you wanted to go hunting for bear, you'd take Leader and just to be fair, give the bear a head start and a twelve-gauge shotgun.
Then there was Scooter — the family parakeet. Now Scooter came to be a member of the family, ironically enough, on a Thanksgiving day about eight years previous. Mom and dad were broke that year — a perennial condition around our house when I was growing up — and mom told dad to go out and get a bird for Thanksgiving.
Well, dad stopped into the local watering hole and had a long conference with two very close friends, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Imperial, for the better part of the afternoon. Then he went out, just like mom told him, and got a bird for Thanksgiving. Scooter. Actually, the family legend was that dad won Scooter in a friendly crap game in the back of said watering hole, but mom would never discuss it and dad would only smile.
Now the important thing to know about Scooter was that he used to fly around the house all the time because dad would leave his cage door open. This drove our cat, Pistol, absolutely nuts. She was a mangy old alley cat with one eye (she lost the other chasing a bird in the attic — ran into a nail. Yuck, is right.) and an even disposition: mean all the time.
So there we were: Ward and June Cleaver; little Joey; the cat, Pistol; the dog, Leader; and the bird, Scooter. The All American Thanksgiving family setting, right? Well, except that June was already mad at Ward because he'd had a couple of belts "before the religious floor show arrives" — as he put it — and little Joey was whining about having to wear a suit and hat that made him look like Elliot Ness's grandson.
Now add to that your basic garden variety teetotaling fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist reverend complete with a King James version under one arm and his Southern Belle bride on the other, and you've got yourself the makings for a USDA Prime Cut disaster looking for a place to happen. And it happened right after dad said grace.
We all sat down, dad at the head of the table, mom at the other end and with The Revs. poised for a group attack on the other side of the table from me.
Mom says, "Homer, will you do the honors of saying grace?"
By now dad was working on his fourth Highball, which he was hiding in the bathroom medicine cabinet.
"Of course, dear," he said. And we all bowed our heads in solemn prayer to hear dad offer grace.
"Grace, now let's eat." Short. Simple. Not very elegant, I'll grant you, but you had to admit, the guy was seldom misunderstood.
You could see the steam roll out of my mom's ears, but by that time dad was up carving the turkey. Which is when Scooter started making low passes over the table and Leader started to howl.
Now, Scooter used to do that — fly around the table at dinner time and land on dad's shoulder. He'd give dad a kiss and dad would give him something off his plate. Sure, it was a little odd but it wasn't like we had a pet buzzard or something. Meanwhile, every time the bird started flying around the table, Leader would start howling because he knew the bird was going to get fed which meant he ought to get something too.
So picture this: you're a newly married Southern Belle spending your first winter in the God-forsaken reaches of Alaska. You've married a preacher so stupid he moves to Alaska in the winter and washes his car in a blizzard until it turns into a giant ice cube. Then you get invited over to some lunatic's house for Thanksgiving dinner who gives a single mono-syllabic offering to the god you've devoted your entire life to, and whose equally lunatic family then arms him with various sharp weapons to start a ritualistic if not satanic dismemberment of one of God Creatures. And just about the time you thought it couldn't get any worse, a blue and yellow bird starts making bombing runs on the table, while a creature that could eat Cujo for breakfast is sitting in the corner howling straight up at the ceiling. Yep, just your average everyday Alaskan Thanksgiving dinner, alright.
Well, for the Actons, this was just business as usual. No big deal, the bird will land any minute, the howling will die down shortly thereafter and with any luck at all the cat won't leap onto dad's back trying to eat the bird like it did last week. But then luck is not something the Acton's were greatly endowed with. Not good luck anyway.
Scooter always made two passes over the table before he went on final approach but on this particular day he must have been distracted by the additional ground personnel near the tower because he missed dad's shoulder by a country mile. Overshot it straight into the gravy bowl.
If you didn't know better you might have thought that Scooter's navigation wasn't half bad because it almost looked like he meant to land on the edge of the gravy bowl — except we all knew he didn't like gravy.
His little feet hit the side of the gravy bowl at about Mach 2 which caused him to do a ground loop and dive head first into the gravy, waist deep — feet and tail feathers pointing straight up.
No time for polite conversation, we got a landing emergency on the field.
Dad grabs the bird out of the hot steaming gravy, burns his hand, throws the bird to the floor and shouts an expletive that would lead the casual observer to understand that not only did the bird come from questionable parentage, but that the bowl was indeed condemned for all eternity to the fires of Hell.
The Reverend's wife gasped and choked on a piece of roll she had in her mouth. Mom jumped up and yelled, "Homer, watch your --- damn mouth!" to which dad shouts back, "Can't Edna, gotta go to the can and wash my -- damn bird off." Meanwhile the Reverend is beating his wife on the back and I fell off my chair onto the floor laughing hysterically.
By this time things were happening pretty fast and I'll admit to being a little theatrical in actually falling off the chair. But it seemed like the right thing to do at the time, considering everything else. I mean how often are you going to get a chance to fall off your chair laughing in front of company at the dinner table and get away with it?
Well, the answer is that you can't get away with it if you're too stupid to live and pull the tablecloth off with you as you go down and all the plates and food and drinks and glasses and silverware and napkins and coffee cups and saucers and sugar and everything else in the known world falls onto the floor for the Marauding Cujo to start wolfing down. Which he did. Immediately.
Being part wolf, Leader knew a feast when saw one and also knew this was probably a once in a lifetime opportunity. So he ate everything he could get his mouth around. Including two napkins which he promptly threw back up along a couple of pares.
Have you ever seen a dog in a feeding frenzy? Every time he'd go to swallow something he'd throw his head up in the air and hit it on the underside of the table, which by that time we were both under in what looked like earthquake debris. So while The Rev is performing the Heimlich maneuver on his wife, you heard a "slurp slurp thump rattle rattle — slurp slurp thump rattle rattle" as Leader ate, hit his head on the table, rattled the remaining silverware and then started all over again.
By this time, dad was in the bathroom plunging a par-boiled Scooter in and out of the toilet bowl like a plumber's helper, trying to wash off a heavy coat of giblet gravy, while shouting for someone to bring him a " --- damn towel to dry this --- damn bird off with."
Well, the dinner party broke up right after Mrs. Rev got her breath back. Leader was a pretty happy boy and as they left managed to wipe his mouth off on Mr. Revs pants leg. Pistol got most of what was left of the Turkey and I went over to Buzzy Thistle's house to tell him how to plan a perfect dinner party. Scooter looked like The Swamp Thing propped up in the corner of his bird cage blinking his eyes about twice a minute and mom didn't talk to dad for the rest of the week. And we never did see The Revs again which was just fine by dad since they "didn't even stay to help clean up or do the dishes or a damn thing."
Yep, just your garden variety nothin' special Alaskan Thanksgiving dinner.
Hope yours goes as well.
