On Nov. 27, 1987, I was 21 years old and I was trying to impress my mother-in-law so I made dinner that year. Everything was perfect. I had everything prepared and it all looked so good. When all the family sat down to dinner, my sister-in-law was going to cut the ham and started laughing.

She told everyone that she couldn't cut the ham, because Pam forgot to take the paper off of it before she cooked it.

I was so proud of that dinner. Everyone laughed for hours after. To this day, every Thanksgiving I'm the joke of the ham that was cooked with the paper still on it. So no one wants Pam to cook the ham anymore. Needless to say, I don't cook for my mother-in-law anymore.

Caring for my elderly mother could be alternately trying and delightful. My mother loved to entertain, but was unable to participate in any of the work involved. That fell to me. Under her very trying direction. However, some of the most trying times were also some of the very best times. That was when family and friends came to visit anytime, but, especially holiday time.

One particular holiday, my brother was visiting and we had invited a friend of our mother's, along with five adult friends of ours. It was a houseful for Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone arrived bringing some delicious smelling dish to contribute to the joyful feast as my brother's turkey simmered in the oven. We greeted and seated all of our guests and I went to the kitchen to begin preliminary preparations for our happy dinner. That was when, turning on the faucets in the kitchen, the sink started gurgling, pipes began banging loudly and bathrooms became unusable. Calmly I went to find my brother and we returned to the kitchen to ponder the situation. Our happy Thanksgiving dinner seemed to have come to a screeching halt.

Just then Mom apprised herself of the situation having become suspicious when both of us quietly slipped into the kitchen. Mom tended to over react to life's little trials and at this moment was true to her habits. Tears, some near yelling and close to hysteria would best describe her condition.

Her friend kind of shuffled around her crying 'Oh, my.' 'Oh, dear.' 'How awful.' Causing Mom's decibel level to raise a bit higher. My brother was about ready to throw a few things in their direction as I maneuvered them out of the kitchen into chairs in the social room in an attempt to calm things down a bit.

My efforts were somewhat rewarded in that they remained in the chairs, if not quietly. Our other guests were happily visiting with each other in the living room. Do plumbers work on Thanksgiving Day? Fortunately for us one did. One of a long list of plumbers to be called. It's always the last one, isn't it? Before he left home, he wanted to make sure we understood that his regular hourly rate would be considerably higher this day. Yes, with nine people awaiting the turkey feast, we have a choice?

In the meantime our mother's guest is wanting to know why we aren't hysterically upset, stressed out and screaming at the tops of our lungs over this? Again, I escorted her back to her chair. We've tried to be very quiet about all of this but Mom, bless her heart, wasn't being put off.

From her chair in the social room she demanded, rather loudly, to know what it's going to cost to have this unknown plumber (because, to her very vocal dismay, there's no way her regular one was coming today) fix the pipes on Thanksgiving Day. Plenty? What, we're going to wait until Monday when the rates go down? Meanwhile our other guests, having been apprised of the slight delay, were having a really good time relaxing and visiting with each other. My brother and I were saying thanks for having such great friends.

When the plumber arrived, we had to stand guard at the kitchen entrance to keep Mom from tramping in to give him directions on what to do and how to do it. We figured at many dollars an hour he probably knew his job without her input. We also didn't want him to bolt and run before the pipes were cleaned out.

In those days, Mom didn't get up and move around quickly and easily; but, it was a bit of an accomplishment on my part to keep her in her seat through the process. Her guest apparently, finally decided we had the situation well in hand and helped 'hold' her down. They also quieted down because now they were whispering to each other in some unknown verbal conspiracy related to how badly 'the children' were behaving during this time of crisis. OK ...

anything that will keep them out of the kitchen.

Meanwhile, the plumber did fix a problem long overdue for fixing. After that, we did more fixing of the savory kind and whipped up a turkey feast to behold. Our guests all gathered together over dinner and since Mom doesn't allow conversation when we have our mouths full, things quieted down considerably. Following dinner, our friends each spent time visiting with Mom. There was nothing Mom liked better than individual attention and she had an overabundance that day. My brother and I gave many thanks, once again, for our great friends (Judy, Bayard, Ruthie, Elaine and Jack) who helped turn a Thanksgiving Day disaster into a very happy memory for mom and for all of us. And, for helping us keep our sense of humor.

This Thanksgiving disaster story is not of the kitchen variety but it certainly was a disaster at the time.

We lived on the Pyritz family ranch on Smith River, which had been in the family since the late 1800s. My mother, a Monson family member, grew up on her family's homestead on the Templeton arm of South Tenmile Lake, met my father and they were married in 1926 and she moved to the ranch.

Subsequently, there were four of us girls, later joined by one brother. Mom decided we girls should have her family's old upright piano, which was back at the homestead at Templeton. This was in the mid-1930s before there was a road up Smith River and only a barely passable, in the summer only, wagon road in to the homestead so the piano had to go by boat at both ends of the journey.

At Thanksgiving some of Mom's four sisters and five brothers and their families were coming to the ranch to spend the holiday and agreed to bring the piano. This meant moving it from the homestead to a boat on the lake, about two miles or so, down the lake to Lakeside and loading on some sort of transport to the Reedsport area. Being quite young and not on that end of the trip, I am not sure if this was by truck or possibly by train to East Gardiner.

My father met the family members and the piano with our boat, a gill-netter, with a large open stern where the nets were carried. The piano was loaded into the boat, the uncles, aunts and cousins climbed in and all headed up Smith River to the ranch. Arriving there, Thanksgiving dinner was ready, so they tied the boat to the dock with the intention of unloading the piano after eating dinner.

In those days we had only one police officer, Dick Miles, in the whole Western Douglas County. I'm sure you old-timers in the Reedsport area remember him. He had, what in those days, was considered a high-powered boat for patrolling all the areas where other access was not possible. As we were enjoying dinner he cruised up the river at a fast speed causing a large wake that rocked the old fishing boat and toppled the piano into the river. Dick, observing what had happened, came back to the dock, began yelling, and we all ran down to the dock to see what the problem was. The piano was gone, sunken to the bottom of the river! The men, including Dick, got a rope around it, managed to fish it out, got it to the house and put it in front of the fireplace where it sat for weeks until it was thoroughly dried out.

This was years before there was any electricity on Smith River.

The unexpected bath didn't seem to hurt the old piano much. It had a few small scratches but the tone was unaffected. After all of this, none of us ever really learned to play it though some of us did take lessons. My sisters still accuse me of using practice as an excuse to get out of helping to wash dishes. Of course, I don't remember it that way. It is still in the family and still on Smith River, now belonging to one of my younger sisters.

My husband and I were married in September 1959. We lived in the small town of Edinburgh, Ind., population 2,500. We rented a house with a large dining room and then, though we had little furniture, we really splurged and bought a braided rug and new dining room furniture to fill the room.

Come Thanksgiving, my husband's sister said that since we had the large dining room we should have Thanksgiving at our house. She would buy the turkey and I could cook it. I was nervous because I had never cooked a turkey before, but I decided I could do it. She brought the frozen turkey to our house a few days before Thanksgiving and informed me that she had bought a hen turkey because they were the very best. I put the turkey in the refrigerator to thaw slowly. Come the night before Thanksgiving the turkey was still partially frozen so I decided to leave it our in the kitchen sink to finish thawing overnight.

My husband was the chairman of our local Jaycee Thanksgiving committee that was going to provide good will boxes of food including a turkey for the needy in our small town. He had gotten up early on Thanksgiving morning to go to our one and only local grocery to assemble and distribute the boxes of food. I got up later, ready to put our hen turkey in the oven. I came into the kitchen only to find the whole breast was torn out of the turkey. I looked into the dining room and laying next to our new dining room table was our neighbors huge cat, stretched out on my new oval rug sound asleep. Not only had the cat eaten the entire breast of our thawing turkey, he had vomited right in the middle of my new rug. What was I going to do? The only grocery in town was closed for the holiday except for the time the Jaycee committee was there to prepare the gift boxes. My husband's whole family was coming for dinner!

My husband came home shortly to find me in tears. What were we going to do?

What would we tell his family? My husband instantly called the grocer who was luckily still at the store to see if there were any turkeys left. Our luck was with us, there was one fresh turkey left, but it was a tom turkey.

My husband rushed out and bought it. We baked it and the whole time I was worried that his sister could tell it was not a hen turkey that we were serving.

It was not until after dinner, after everyone had enjoyed and agreed that hen turkeys were true in fact the very best turkeys you could eat that we told them our sad story of what a terrible morning we had ‹ and that the turkey was actually a tom turkey that had turned out perfect.

We later found one of our basement windows had been left open and that was how the cat had sneaked in. No, we did not kill the cat, but we will have been married 50 years come next September and I have cooked many, many turkeys in all the years, but not one Thanksgiving has passed that I didn't think about he horrible experience I had with my first turkey.