THANKSGIVING 1953

When I was coming up on the family farm in Bindweed County,

Indiana, Thanksgiving would be an occasion for hunting.  My father, and on occasion, with my uncles would go out into the fields and see if they could get a rabbit.  Usually they did.

This was before deer and other larger game had worked their way that far south.  On other occasions my father would pick up his ancient 12 gauge shotgun and announce that he was going to go out and 'scare up a rabbit'.  He almost

always did.  The rabbits took shelter and foraged in the rows of corn that had been picked in the previous fall.  The old man could pick off a running rabbit with a .22 but the shotgun meant business.  A rabbit wouldn't run until you were right on top of him.  Then the rabbit would leap into the air and run at amazing speed, twisting and bobbing in and out of the rows of tangled cornstalks.  Their mottled gray sides and white tails blending in with the skiff of snow that is always present in Norhern Indiana winters.

Blam!  And it was all over.  The rabbit would tumble head over feet.  The old man would walk to the house carrying one or two rabbits in his game pouch.  He would nail their feet to the side of the woodshed and skin and gut them.  

My mother whose limited culinary skills were hampered by a primitive wood fueled cook stove would cut them up, roll them in flour and fry them in lard.  Sometimes the blast from the shotgun would shatter the bones of the game and there would be sharp pieces of bone sticking up.  At times I would have to pick pieces of shot out of the meat.  Amazingly, there are members of my family who have lived up into their 90's.

We never had turkey.  Our Thanksgiving dinner was fried rabbit.  Also it was our dinner almost every night for a couple of winters.

It wasn't that we went hungry but neither did we feast.  We were grateful for what we had and our carbon footprint was small.  But the thought of fried rabbit (or any other kind) to this day is repugnant to me.

I am thankful today for the Federal school hot lunch program.