Seventeen Pumpkin Pies and Other Funny Thanksgiving Stories

By the second week of November, the bulletin board at our church sprouts paper leaves, the sign-up sheets multiply, and somebody’s uncle gets asked to say grace. These are short stories from the pews and supper tables of Willow Bend, where the grain elevator is the tallest thing in the county and the church parking lot fills up before the café opens. They’re meant for reading aloud, preferably before anybody picks up the carving knife.

The Paper Leaf Tree

The week before Thanksgiving, the Sunday school at Willow Bend Community Church tapes a brown paper tree to the hallway wall. The children fill it with paper leaves listing what they’re thankful for.

Most leaves are predictable. Puppies. Mom. Pizza. One very honest girl wrote “recess” four times.

But Pastor Dale stopped cold at a leaf in crooked orange crayon: “I am thankful for Pastor Dale.”

He found the author, seven-year-old Wesley Parrish, at the cookie table and knelt down, a little misty. “Wesley, that means a great deal to me. Why me?”

Wesley explained that he couldn’t think of anything, so his teacher told him to write the first good thing he saw. “You were in the doorway.”

Pastor Dale absorbed this. “And what was the second thing you saw?”

“The fire extinguisher.”

“So I beat the fire extinguisher.”

Wesley nodded kindly. “You were closer.”

The lesson: When we can’t think of a single thing to be thankful for, our blessings are usually standing right in front of us.

(1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Seventeen Pumpkin Pies

Loretta Beasley has chaired the Harvest Supper sign-up sheet for nineteen years. She treats it the way generals treat maps.

This year, by Wednesday, she had a problem. Seventeen people had signed up for pumpkin pie. One had signed up for rolls. Nobody had signed up for turkey.

Loretta fretted. She phoned. She prayed out loud in the produce aisle.

Sunday evening, the Kessler boys came in with two smoked turkeys they “just happened to have.” The Hendersons brought a brisket. Somebody’s cousin brought a ham nobody had asked for. Old Mr. Tolliver, the lone rolls man, brought enough rolls for a regiment.

Loretta looked over the full tables and sighed. “Well. The Lord provided.”

Then she looked at the dessert table. “Generously.”

The lesson: Worry less about the sign-up sheet, because God has a way of filling the table.

(Philippians 4:19)

Second Place to Gravy

My husband Harlan and I have been married forty-one years. Our family has one rule at Thanksgiving dinner: before anybody touches a fork, we go around the table and say what we’re thankful for.

The grandchildren say video games. My daughter says her health. My son-in-law says football, which is really more of a prayer request.

Harlan says the gravy. Every year. Forty-one years of gravy.

This year my hip kept me off my feet, and the gravy came out of a packet my granddaughter stirred. It was thin. It had lumps you could skip across a pond.

When his turn came, Harlan said, “The gravy.” Everybody laughed. Then he cleared his throat and added, “And the woman who usually makes it.”

The table went quiet. I passed him the cranberry sauce so nobody would see my face.

Forty-one years in, I’m still running second to the gravy, and I have never been happier to lose.

The lesson: Say your thanks for the people you love out loud, while they can still hear it.

(Proverbs 31:28)

The Year the Power Went Out

At 9:40 on Thanksgiving morning, with a twenty-two pound turkey halfway to glory, our power went out. The whole street went dark.

I said several things that were not quite sins but were related to them by marriage.

Harlan said, “Could be worse.” I told him to name one way. He couldn’t, so he went outside to look at the transformer, as though staring at it were a skill.

By eleven, Deacon Arliss called. The fellowship hall had a generator and a double oven, and half the neighborhood was already on its way.

Harlan carried our half-cooked turkey three blocks in the roasting pan. He walked with the solemn dignity of a ring bearer and did not spill one drop.

We ate at folding tables with the Pruitts, the Duongs, two families I’d never met and a retired dentist who carved like a surgeon. Nobody’s dishes matched. Mrs. Duong traded me her egg rolls for my sweet potato recipe, and the Pruitt twins fell asleep under the table with the dentist’s coat for a blanket.

The power came back at 4:15. I was almost disappointed. Almost.

The lesson: Grumbling never fixed an oven, but a thankful heart can turn a bad morning into a full table.

(Philippians 2:14)

Same as Yesterday

Opal Fenner sets a quart jar on her kitchen counter on the first of November. Each day, she and her husband Clyde drop in a slip of paper naming one thing they’re thankful for. On Thanksgiving, she reads them aloud.

Opal’s slips are lovely. “The cardinal at the feeder.” “Our granddaughter’s phone call.” “Rain after the dry spell.”

Clyde’s slips, all twenty-six of them, say the same thing: “Same as yesterday.”

Opal held up the stack at dinner and gave him the look reserved for men who track mud on clean floors. “Clyde Fenner. Twenty-six days.”

Clyde shrugged. “Nothing changed. Still had you. Still had the house. Still had my coffee. Why would I write it different?”

Opal opened her mouth, shut it, and tucked the slips in her apron pocket.

She says it’s the most romantic thing he’s ever written, which tells you something about the competition.

The lesson: God’s faithfulness is new every morning, even when it looks just like yesterday.

(Lamentations 3:22-23)

Uncle Ray Says Grace

Aunt Bev times Uncle Ray’s blessings the way other cooks time an egg. This year she made him promise to keep it short.

He meant to. Then Bev peeked in the oven, found two pans of dinner rolls she’d forgotten to bake, and gave him a look across the table that clearly said, Keep going.

So Ray went back to the Pilgrims. He thanked the Lord for the harvest, for the farmers, for the truckers who hauled the harvest and for the roads the truckers drove on. He prayed for every cousin by name, including two who had moved to Arizona and one he may have confused with a neighbor’s dog.

Somewhere around the missionaries, the mashed potatoes set like plaster. Ray’s granddaughter Kinsey, age five, whispered “Amen” hopefully. Twice. Bev shook her head.

The oven timer dinged in the middle of the Apostle Paul. Ray wrapped up in one breath, beaming. “Amen! Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

Kinsey patted his arm. “Grandpa, it got cold at the Pilgrims.”

The lesson: Be thankful for the people who quietly cover for us, even when it takes a very long prayer.

(Philippians 1:3)

Asleep Before the Toaster

My mother taught me to count my blessings at bedtime instead of sheep. I have done it every night for over sixty years.

I start with the big ones. Harlan. The children. The grandchildren, in birth order, so nobody can accuse me of favorites. My church. My health, such as it is.

Then the small ones. Hot water. Reading glasses I can actually find. The dishwasher, which has never once told me how to load it, unlike some people.

In all those years I have never reached the end of the list. Most nights I’m asleep before I get to the toaster.

I asked Harlan once how far down his list he gets. “You,” he said. I was touched for very nearly a full minute.

Then he explained that I’m first.

The lesson: Our blessings will always outnumber our ability to count them.

(Psalm 40:5)

Happy Thanksgiving from Willow Bend, and save me a slice of pumpkin pie. We have seventeen.