Wild turkeys

Not all of us have spent every Thanksgiving snug and cozy at grandmother’s house.

And some holiday observances weren’t much like a Norman Rockwell scene.

So, on the heading-home day of the festive weekend, let’s consider a buffet of Thanksgivings celebrated in unusual places.

Back in 1977, when she was 18, Patty Reeder spent Thanksgiving in a Seattle hospital.

“My boyfriend, being drunk and angry and crazy, shot me in the face at about 4 a.m.,” she wrote.

Yikes. Nothing says “Happy holidays!” quite like a slug from a pistol.

“When the bullet entered my left cheek, it shattered, and the fragments remain to this day,” said Reeder, who now lives in Spokane. “They show up on my dental X-rays.”

In 1959, Terry Frizzell was a cook aboard a Navy icebreaker, the USS Atka. When Thanksgiving arrived, the ship was being rocked and rolled by high seas near Antarctica.

These were not ideal conditions for convivial dining. “It was bad,” said Frizzell, who lives in Chewelah.

At one point, cooked turkeys flew off a counter and onto the floor.

But Frizzell’s shipmates knew what he was up against. “No one complained.”

Spokane’s Tadashi Osborne spent most of a chilly Thanksgiving in 1985 on guard duty at an Army post in Alabama.

“Of course, I missed my family, and could have easily felt sorry for myself, but I didn’t,” he wrote.

Instead, he found himself warmed by visions of the family gathering he was missing. And he thought about soldiers who had spent the holiday in far more trying circumstances.

Guys like Colville’s Dale Walston, for instance.

On Thanksgiving in 1944, his infantry unit was in a mountainous region in the Philippines, temporarily cut off from supplies.

“As I remember it, in 12 days we had three days of food. The next five days, we had nothing. Then Thanksgiving day, a Piper Cub plane flew over and threw out a lot of 2-cent candy bars. After nearly everyone had eaten theirs, the order came from someone to just eat half of it.”

In 1966, Don Baribault was on a Navy destroyer off the coast of Vietnam. A typhoon blew away plans for a deluxe Thanksgiving meal. So they went with Plan B. “We had cold beans and hot dogs,” he wrote.

In 1948, Frank Potter spent Thanksgiving flying coal into Berlin as part of the Cold War airlift to that divided German city. “For our dinner we had drumsticks of Spam,” he wrote. “My wife and two small children spent the day in Japan feasting on fish sticks and rice.”

Of course, you don’t have to journey around the world to have an unusual holiday.

A few years ago, Doug Bruce and his wife were headed back to Spokane in a new car picked up in Michigan. It was Thanksgiving, and the couple stopped in Missoula. They spotted a restaurant that was open.

They had already stuffed themselves when they discovered the meal was intended for homeless Montanans.

Oops.

Quite a few women have delivered babies on Thanksgiving.

Kellogg’s Pat Cole is among those born on that particular Thursday. “My older sister sure does remember it and never misses a chance to let me know that I ruined Thanksgiving dinner for her and my dad.”

Cole noted that the occasion probably wasn’t a laugh riot for mom, either.

Sandy Leinberger was in Alaska when she gave birth on Thanksgiving in 1969. She still refers to that daughter as her “turkey baby.”

Gary Edwards of Post Falls had his appendix burst on Thanksgiving in 2002. He had emergency surgery. But his wife brought him a full-course holiday sampler – complete with candles – even though he could have only a bite or two.

Janice Holcomb at least got to eat before she went to the hospital. It was 1988. She was at her parents’ home in Electric City, Wash.

After dinner, she went out to stretch her legs. “After walking all over town, two blocks from home I slipped on an icy spot and broke my wrist in three places.”

Cheryl Lewis’ family was trying to drive straight through from Spokane to Tulsa, Okla., in 1999 when their van shot off an icy highway, flipped and rolled. The banged-up travelers celebrated Thanksgiving in a hospital in Cheyenne, Wyo.

Moses Lake’s Frances Jones spent Thanksgiving 1978 in Iran. “Our menu consisted of a can of Spam liberally glazed with strawberry jam, a can of warmed up green beans and – after a diligent search the day before – a large bowl of creamed baby onions.”

It’s a must.

Air Force Sgt. D. J. Bolling celebrated Thanksgiving 2001 on an air base in Saudi Arabia. He remembers being floored by the effort put forth by the mess hall crew to make the occasion special. “Eight kinds of pie,” he said.

Anita Lamp was in Kenya when Thanksgiving came around in 1996. “After a day of animal viewing, our group returned for dinner and discovered that the kitchen staff had prepared a turkey and the trimmings for us. They weren’t sure it was done correctly, but it was perfect. We were the only Americans there, and I’m sure the other tourists wondered why we got so much attention on this ordinary Thursday.”

Karyn Christner remembers dining on peanut butter and crackers during a Thanksgiving spent in Nepal in the late ‘70s.

And on and on. Thanks to the 100 or so readers who shared stories.

The idea of spending this quintessential American holiday far from the United States might seem like a confusing disconnect. But Spokane’s Linda Cunningham told about how it can actually remind you to focus on the true meaning of the holiday.

“Thanksgiving 2004 found my ophthalmologist husband Michael and I, along with several other colleagues from Spokane, in the small village of Nalta, Bangladesh. We had agreed to go to the local hospital there (which was co-founded by retired Spokane orthopedist, Dr. George Bagby) to set up an eye surgery program with equipment donated by Spokane Rotary and Lions clubs.

“Our workdays had been long and tiring, but we had predetermined to surprise the others in our group by celebrating Thanksgiving when Thursday rolled around.

“I had packed two cans of white meat turkey, a small can of cranberry sauce, and a box of dressing mix.

“We thought the surgeries and clinic would never end that day. But finally, around 8:30 p.m., we began our preparations. After a futile search for our Swiss army knife to open our cans, my resourceful husband opened them with an orthopedic hammer and chisel. I then mixed turkey with a couple of packets of ranch dressing.

“We boiled water in an old electric tea kettle, which also served as our source of sterile water in the O.R., mixed it with the dressing mix, and assembled our ‘harvest’ sandwiches of turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce on white bread which had been obtained from the local market.

“After we assembled our group in the upstairs staff conference room – decorated as best we could with leftover flowers from our welcome reception and paper Thanksgiving napkins brought from home, our host doctor surprised us with the Bangladeshi version of hot mashed potatoes and gravy.

“We sat around our Thanksgiving table as horns honked incessantly and local people talked loudly outside, and each of us expressed our profound thanks for our families, our jobs back home, our way of life, the luck of being born in the U.S.A., as well as the joy of being able to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

“One of our staff members had given us a package of pumpkin crème cookies as a bon voyage gift. So that became the dessert for a Thanksgiving in which our food never tasted so good and that none of us will ever forget.”