This Thanksgiving is for the dogs…
The chop, chop, chop of the big knife on wood breaks through Marvin’s dreamy reverie. With great effort he rouses himself and lumbers into the kitchen to take up his station under the cutting board, hopeful that some errant carrot circle will roll off and land on his turf. Anything on the floor is fair game for Marvin Gardens the now “Olden” retriever. Marvin is so long and lean he looks like an articulated bus. When he goes around corners… he bends in the middle. His characteristic panting is nearly as loud as a bus and his breath… ugh! worse than bus exhaust!
I remember when he first joined the family. It was just before Thanksgiving thirteen years ago. I was driving carpool in the white van and had just picked up my 8th grader, Megan and her car-pool buddy, Adam. There, in a busy intersection was this bandy legged golden retriever puppy. I told Megan to open the side door and we called to him. He came running over all gangly-dangly limbed and loose jointed. With considerable effort he clambered up into the van. Immediately inside the door he put both front paws on a box of tissues and began pulling them out one at a time, rhythmically, systematically. So proud of his bird retrieving genes, he was also a clown and thoroughly delighted with himself. He made us laugh.
Megan told me and Adam that a boy in her classes, Charlie, had been palling around with this pup all day. We went back to school where Megan found Charlie who assured us that the dog wasn’t his. No one seemed to know from where the golden had come. It was clear this 4-legged had misplaced his owners. We called him “Charlie” all the rest of that day.
Having relieved the retriever of the Kleenex box, we dropped Adam off at his home then hurried back to our house. Using a sweater as makeshift collar/leash I escorted the 6 month old pup, who’d already endeared himself to us with his antics, into our fenced-in back yard. There, for the first time, he encountered MacDougal MacDuff.
MacDougal, a shelter foundling himself, had already been with us for 6 months and he let everyone know that HE, MacDougal, was ALPHA dog. For the first 5 seconds the fur was raised along both dogs’ backs. As doggie noses know these things, it only took them a heartbeat to sort out the alpha/beta thing. Then, there was nothing to do but PLAY! They ran circles round the yard and around each other roto-tilling the lawn in the bargain. It was hilarious watching them. Marvin was slightly shorter than MacDougal who was very fast but what Marvin lacked in speed he made up for in his rangy gait and being just plain goofy! His entire aura was one of delight with life. “Game? I love to play games! What’re we gonna play next!!??”
Megan and I made signs on her Dad’s cue-card stock to put up all around Oakwood School and in our neighborhood. I called the L.A. Times, The Recycler and a local throw-away newspaper to run ads about a FOUND Golden Retriever. I called two local shelters describing the foundling and leaving our phone number. He stayed that night and the next which brought us to Thanksgiving.
That year was one of our larger gatherings: 37 people for dinner. Three tables; no waiting… all buffet. In addition to our family that year we had several strays (people who were without their own kin for one reason or another). There was very little floor space for all the table legs, chair legs and people legs. The “Charlie, Marvin” being ingratiated himself to all by lying in the middle of the only open floor space so we all had to walk around or step over him. We thought of calling him “Mat.” In fact, we tried out several suggested names that day.
During the following two weeks there was not a single nibble from the shelters, the ads, the signs, or the walking the neighborhood by school. It dawned on us that our mission was accomplished: we had found him a good home. His crazy puppy gyrations made MacDougal look calm. All in all it seemed a good fit. So… we got him all his shots and gathered his nuts for the winter (neutered him) and then set about in earnest to find a suitable name. By late December it was clear that he was a gardener… bringing in whole tree branches and the last of the scraggly tomato crop and zucchini squashes from the yard. So we called him “Marvin Gardens”… in his case it was a verb not just one of the yellow properties on the Monopoly board.
I’m remembering this all as I chop up the left-over vegetable crudités from yesterday’s feast. We were a smaller group, only 16 people. MacDougal passed away last January. Marvin can barely see, hear or stand up but he’s still so full of love and still a clown. Each Thanksgiving brings the memory of his first one with us.
* * * * * * * * * * *
This is the story of Aunt Mickey and the stove top stuffing. Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past…
Aunt Mildred is one of those Aunties who lends herself to good-natured ribbing because she definitely has some quirks. Thanksgiving day 1974 the whole family packed up to go camping at McGrath State Beach. By WHOLE family I mean: My husband and I and our dog, Fairfax (1974 was B.C. – before children), my mom, step-dad and 11 year old brother and their dog, Butchie, my mother in law and her dog Girl, my older brother, his wife and two sons 8 and 4, Uncle Larry (my mom’s brother) and aunt Mickey (Mildred) and their 2 daughters and their dog, Pepper. In addition, Mickey’s brother and sister-in-law, and my then eighty something year old grandparents came for the meal but stayed in a nearby hotel, rather than camping out.
One of Aunt Mickey’s quirks is that she carries about with her an unwieldy fear of germs. It has gotten in her and other people’s way on numerous occasions. It may have to do with her doing a stint as a registered nurse for our old family doctor, Irv King. Something about staphylococcus made her cock-eyed.
The whole of our camp-out Thanksgiving feast was pot luck. Aunt Mickey was in charge of the turkey & stuffing. So… she cooked that turkey without stuffing it because heaven knows that would magnetize dread salmonella bacterium and sicken us all so we’d croak right there on McGrath State Beach. (I can see the headline: Entire family and dogs wiped out by bad turkey Thanksgiving Day.) Uncle Larry carved that turkey at home. There was only one better carver than Uncle Larry and that was his dad, my Gramps. Well, they froze all the turkey meat in neat foil packages. Auntie planned to warm it up and make stove-top stuffing….which she did from a box over the camp stove in about 3 minutes flat.
It was November at the beach. It was powerfully windy. It was cold… penetratingly cold. Mama Freddy, my mother in law had brought some pot roast bless her heart! And it was warm and fragrant. The turkey never did quite thaw out. To say that the stove-top stuffing was not a hit is like saying that Hitler was not kind. It tasted like the cardboard box from which it came. No one ate it.
We put it down for the dogs. “Girl,” Mama Freddy’s dog walked over, sniffed it and walked away. Now, this is a dog who ate horse plop from the equestrian trail near her apartment. This is a dog who would eat anything not chained down. My beloved husband called her a Sealy Posturpedic with legs. Our dear Fairfax took a sniff and also walked away which was not altogether unexpected. Mark says Fairfax was an old man in a dog suit. There were many foods from which he’d walk away. And with such attitude! “What? You expect me to eat that? Feh! A dog wouldn’t eat that!” Next up was Pepper, Aunt Mickey and Uncle Larry’s dog…same story… a sniff and a walk. Butchie, my mom & dad’s dog, bless his short-legged Corgi heart walked over to that stove-top stuffing, nosed it a bit, then lifted his back leg and peed on it! He christened it “INEDIBLE!” for all the world to see. Even Aunt Mickey had to laugh. We were roaring ‘til the tears came and nearly froze on our cheeks.
When our children were growing up and would beg us to tell them “Family Funnies” this story was one of the favorites. Marvin is patient with my reminiscing but enthusiastically earnest, doing his ever-hopeful-dance… that some more veggies will fall off the cutting board as I chop, chop, chop.
Written in 2005. Marvin is in doggie heaven chasing tennis balls with MacDougal, Girl, Pepper and Butchie. So is Aunt Mickey. Mercifully, they don't allow Stove Top Stuffing in heaven.
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