November 25, 2007
Thanksgiving dinner brings memories of turkey days past
By Gene Krider
Being unable to find a past column I had written about a Thanksgiving calamity at our house during World War II, I am going to retell it since it deals with timely subjects: fuel scarcity and Thanksgiving.
No matter what fuel you use, heating bills continue to climb, and we may find ourselves in a situation like the one during WWII.
We heated the small laundry heater in the kitchen with anthracite (fast-burning, slick, black) coal and the big Heatrola in the living room with bituminous (slow-burning, dull) coal. Everything else worth having was rationed so I guess coal was too.
The laundry heater was the only stove kept burning during the wintertime, and the doors from the hall to the kitchen and Grandma’s and Nancy’s rooms were kept open. The rest of the house was closed off and very frigid, especially at night. On sunny days, my parents’ and my rooms got some warmth from the large windows but, since they were single-paned with no weather-stripping and the ceilings were not insulated, very little heat stayed in.
The schools were heated by a coal boiler with radiators. The janitor fired it up in the morning and let it burn until about noon when he cut off the coal stoker, which let the fire go out.
There was still enough steam in the system to keep the building warm until mid-afternoon, which added a new punishment to having to stay after school. I got warm from walking 1.6 miles home wearing thick long stockings, corduroy knee pants, an undershirt, thick cotton plaid shirt, a wool sweater, a wool scarf under my wool winter coat with a wool stocking cap pulled down over my ears.
I had a lot of head hair in those days, so sometimes I wore earmuffs without a cap. Only my nose got cold.
On Thanksgiving 1946, all of mother’s family had left Statesville for war duties, so that left the Krider family as Aunt Mattie Short and her daughter, Eugenia; Aunt Sudie Krider and her daughter, Cecelia; Aunt Carrie McNeely; Grandmother Ida Krider; my parents; Nancy and I, all living at home.
At a special sale at Belk in Charlotte, my mother had recently bought a complete dinner table set for eight, including Noritaki porcelain china, a four-piece place setting of lead crystal, a linen damask table cloth and eight napkins.
Since the porcelain was Japanese, stores were getting rid of any Japanese products at greatly reduced prices.
Mother wanted to show off her newly acquired elegance, so all the Kriders were invited to Thanksgiving dinner at noon.
Mother had been cooking since early morning, so she and Daddy set about unpacking all the new tableware, and I was dispatched to light the special fire in the living room.
I got smart and decided to use the anthracite coal in the Heatrola so it would heat up faster. It worked too well.
The roaring fire went shooting up the chimney, blew out the flue plug on the dinning room side and shot it across the room while a great cloud of back soot poured out, covering everything in the dinning room.
We had to gather up the food and take it over to Aunt Sudie’s house. I do not remember being punished. My parents were probably too busy packing all the food to worry about me.
I kept out of the way.
