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STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK Prime rib and pecan pie weren’t the only thing served up at the Senior Connection’s special Thanksgiving meal this week. Memories of Thanksgivings past were going around, as well, as some 120 Wood River Valley residents bellied up to the table to avail themselves of Chef Brian Ahern’s melt -in-your-mouth prime rib. Volunteer Susan McKee recalled one serendipitous Thanksgiving moment just a couple years ago when she prepared an entire Thanksgiving meal to share with a friend who had been going to Twin Falls to get radiation treatments for cancer.
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Volunteers prepared plenty of Tomato Parmesan Soup, Caesar Salad and Pumpkin Pie under the watchful eye of Chef Brian Ahern.
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“I had turkey, potatoes, a big salad, fruit salad, stuffing, yams and pumpkin pie. And my friend said she just wasn’t up for it,” she recalled. Undaunted, McKee headed to another friend who had asked her to partake of their Thanksgiving dinner. When she got there, she found they had only chicken thighs. “I said, ‘I have a whole meal in the trunk of my car. Their eyes opened wide and the one woman was just thrilled. ‘I’ll have white meat!’ ” she said. The first Thanksgiving McKee ever made, however, was far different. Just out of college, she was working for a travel agency in Valdez, Alaska, and took advantage of her day off work to try her hand at turkey and the trimmings.
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Penny Leopold and Mike Vowels helped do the dishes. “The best part of my week is the day I volunteer at The Senior Connection,” said Vowels.
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“We did dinner and the guys were having drinks so they said they were going to do the dishes later. It had snowed all day and it was still snowing and, all of a sudden, the pipes froze. We weren’t able to do the dishes for a week!” she recounted. Another diner told of his big turkey heist—something that looks so innocent in a time of mass shootings. He and a friend were on the way back to the dorm at Oregon State University after enjoying a few Sloe Gins. As they passed a turkey farm, nothing would do but they hop over the fence and grab one. They took the turkey back to the dorm and pushed it into a room of sleeping students, awakening the entire dorm with a mess of feathers and cackles and commotion. In no time, six police cars arrived on the scene. The two young men managed to slip the turkey out , watching as the evidence ran right into the arms of an awaiting patrolman. And then they climbed up on the roof and down the other side, hoping to make a getaway.
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While many dined in on Thanksgiving Eve, Meals on Wheels volunteers took dinners to seniors who could not get out.
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Seeing as to how their chances were slim, they gave themselves up, agreeing to apologize to the farmer rather than go to jail. The farmer appeared stern for a minute as he listened to the stuttering students. Then he broke out into a chuckle. “Now, in my day it was hogs in the sorority house!” he said.
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