{"id":490,"date":"2015-10-06T21:14:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T21:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/?p=490"},"modified":"2015-10-08T17:38:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T17:38:50","slug":"worst-thanksgiving-dish-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/?p=490","title":{"rendered":"Worst Thanksgiving Dish Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

To be honest, my grandmother was not a gramma. Grammas are found in storybooks. My grandmother was found in the Masonic Temple in Detroit where she worked for the Shriners. Guys in silly hats. Margaret was a party girl \u2013 always had been. She married a scallywag at 18 years of age, produced my mother, fooled around\u2026got caught and then divorced.<\/p>\n

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\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a photo of my grandmother talking to two ladies when she visited the family farm near Bradford, Ontario. Those two ladies in the pinnies could be grammas — but not mine.\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\"A<\/p>\n

A beer and a cigarette. That was my grandmother.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Every so often she did try and act the gramma part. Well, once in a lifetime. She had not raised my mother. She lived in a different city having a swell time. But I guess Gramma found herself sober one day and realized she was leaving my mother, and by extension her two granddaughters, without a visible heritage.<\/p>\n

And so my grandmother ordered a turkey platter from Hudson\u2019s Department Store in Detroit and had it delivered to us in Canada. It took up half the dining room table. And we didn\u2019t even eat turkey \u2013 not at Thanksgiving or Christmas. We were British-heritage goose-eaters, not American turkey eaters. OK, the platter was large enough to hold a goose so we did see it on Christmas day. And that was scary enough. <\/p>\n

That one piece of crockery became the family joke. \u201cIf you don\u2019t behave, I\u2019ll leave you the turkey platter,\u201d my mother would threaten. Unfortunately after my sister died, I knew what my inheritance was to be \u2013 the damned turkey platter. It was so big it spent all year under my parents\u2019 bed. And it was u-g-l-y. I remember it being mainly coloured with a sickly yellow. In fact only the buildings in it were yellow. Yes, two buildings\u2026with yellow thatched roofs. The brown, red, blue and white feathers on the turkey made it look sort of like a peacock with a tail trimmed round instead of flowing.<\/p>\n

\"platter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After my mother died, I found the platter way up high in their storage locker. Kelly, a friend with an antique store was there. She didn\u2019t want the platter. \u201cBut it\u2019s Thanksgiving this weekend. If it\u2019s ever going to sell \u2013 this is the time,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

Kelly relented, put the platter on her website and it sold immediately\u2026 for $45 CDN. At no time did I try to hide that it was the ugliest, worst Thanksgiving dish ever. It photographs better than it looks in real life. I was very lucky to get rid of it.<\/p>\n

\"candles\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the other hand when I went looking for the photo on Kelly\u2019s website, I found the cute little Christmas candles my mother put on display every year. Like all the candles in our house, they never felt the heat of a match. It was sad to see those holiday icons again. But I was lucky to get rid of them too.<\/p>\n

The story of the dreaded thanksgiving platter would not die.<\/strong><\/p>\n

e-mail trail:<\/strong> Barbara, Kelly & Lina.
\nI had sent Kelly a copy of Worst Thanksgiving Dish ever to read.<\/p>\n

Kelly\u2019s return e-mail to me:<\/p>\n