A THANKSGIVING DROP FOR DOBBLETROP

We reprint this classic here in its en­tirety with a tip of the hat to THE PALIMPSEST, published by the State Historical Society of

  “The day before he had investi­gated his full share of a Thanksgiv­ing fowl, eaten at the fashionable dining hour of six, and when the meal was concluded Aminidab wan­dered off to pass the evening with some other thankful companions. It’s wonderful what an amount of praise and gratitude is developed by the tender breast bone of a turkey. Now Mr. Dobbletrop is one of those men that can’t find time to be thankful more than once a year, and when the “sign is right” he is sufficiently grate­ful to answer for twelve months to come. He is grateful, and full in other ways. Thursday night he found his companions — Tom and Jerry, Moody and Sarkey, old man Burbon, Udolpho Schnapps, and in fact all his cronies were there, and between them they rounded up the evening hours of Thanksgiving day until Fri­day morning was well along.

Then Mr. Dobbletrop went home and re­tired to rest by the side of the fem­inine Dobbletrop, taking good care to keep his face turned away from her’s. He had been out in the cold and was afraid she might take a chill from his breath.

          “Soon he slept, and sleeping he dreamed. In his vision he thought he had been changed into a turkey roost. Huge gobblers clutched their claws around the profile of his Roman nose. Immense turkey-hens perched astride each ear and howled against his tympanum sentences concerning dressing and gravy. A film of salad covered each eye, great plump oysters dropped like tears from his cheeks, and celery sprouted like the horns of the behemoth from his forehead.

He was smothered in gravy — a second Clarence. Dumplings engulfed him; mince pies threatened to over­whelm him, and plum puddings came rolling down imaginary moun­tains to crush him in an avalanche of sweets and raisins. He was sailing along a sea of schnapps. Suddenly a fearful storm came and wrecked his barque.

There for hours he bat­tled with angry waves of Tom and Jerry. Old Burgundy foamed in his smarting eyes; sour mash spirits rushed in a straggling tide down the Dobbletrop gullet. Gout and indiges­tion oppressed him. All of his remote ancestors came from under their headstones, armed with red hot pitch­forks which they thrust into his diaphragm. He was stuffed and baked, his grandmothers for ten generations back basting his brown­ing back with steaming gravy.

All the turkeys that had been raised since the time when Adam plucked the first thanksgiving fowl from a sour apple tree in Mesopatamia and had a difficulty with Eve because he wouldn’t pick up cobs with which to cook it, ere piled on his breast-He clutched frantically at the heap, but was only able to pull out two handsful of feathers before Mrs. Dobbletrop landed him on the floor, and he awoke to find that good lady’s back hair in his hands and she caressing his head with his right boot.

There was a bald place just back of her ears, and with careful thoughtfulness she had selected the right boot because the heel was gone from the left. Before Aminidab had completed his explanation his head looked like the Himalaya mountains after a severe fit of smallpox. He nar­rated his dreams in extenuation to Mrs. Dobbletrop, but she said he had gone to bed drunk, and that fancied turkeys wouldn’t replace her dis­membered scalp lock. Next year Aminidab proposed to enjoy his Thanksgiving at home and sleep in the woodshed.”

Sources: American Farm & Homes

ALMANAC

For the year of our Lord 1972

          Edited by Ray Geiger, Philom.