Ancestry Magazine

It was 1946 and I could not be at home for the holidays. My husband had just returned from overseas. He had seen the end of World War II from the deck of an aircraft carrier off the coast of Japan. With the promise of the G.I. Bill, we left our home in Mississippi and went to Texas to attend Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Full of youthful confidence and hope, we planned to become great writers. We thought we would be another Fitzgerald and Zelda, or even the Brownings—who knew? I found a position with a contractor and enrolled in a night class while my husband attended classes full time. We were ready for the next phase in our lives, but Thanksgiving arrived, and we had never been away from friends and family. We were also broke, sad, and—yes—lonely.

I had yet to receive my paycheck, but my kind employer gave me two tickets to a show at the Majestic Theatre. About all I can recall of this stage show was a dog act and a quiz show. My husband volunteered for the quiz show and won, of all things, a dead turkey (this was before frozen turkeys). We left the theater a bit perplexed about what to do with our prize.

Our small two-room apartment had an icebox, but no refrigerator. And I hadn’t a notion of how to cook a bird like this. We walked down Main Street, bird in hand, and then its head fell out of the package and the turkey gave us a baleful stare. My husband, à la Humphrey Bogart, raised the turkey’s head, pointed it at me, and said, “Here’s looking at you kid.”

There we were, standing on Main Street, unmindful of the passers-by who were staring at a young couple with a dead bird, laughing like crazy in downtown Dallas on Thanksgiving Day. Almost penniless and very naïve, we decided to try to sell the turkey. We boldly entered a posh restaurant—the name escapes me now—and offered our Thanksgiving bird to the chef. Blessed man! He gave us $5 for the bird and offered us a holiday dinner.

We sat in the café eating, talking, and laughing and forgot that home was far away. We knew that we had much to be thankful for. My fella was home from the war safely, and we just knew that life was wonderful—that we would live forever and get rich, too.

Dean Harding McGarity was born in 1924 in rural Mississippi, a few miles from the famous Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg. Although she has lived in Texas for many years, she says, “Whenever I begin to write a story, my heart goes home to Mississippi.” She is author of Comfort Me with Apples, a novel set in rural Mississippi in the 1930s.