From the Bench
DUCKING CHICAGO
Everyone, I suppose, has Thanksgiving stories, and memories of the holiday that stick. The older you get, the more possibilities.
I remember my first (and last) Thanksgiving in Chicago. Like many of my memories of Chicago, I would like to forget it, but I can’t. It was 1955, and I shared an apartment with another engineer from Tennessee who had also lost his way and found himself in the Windy City on one of the most cherished of "family" holidays.
Although we were friends, neither of us was ecstatic over sharing this special time together. We weren’t "family," and did not take to the "togetherness" thing. What I’m trying to say is, we tolerated each other quite well, but that was it.
Bachelorhood ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, at least it wasn’t in our case.
Since we had only one day off, and were also working Saturdays, we did not care to go out in public on Thanksgiving day to be made miserable by the spectacle of families "sharing", and the memories that went with it. We decided to eat in, and I decided to cook.
That was our first mistake.
At that time, my major success with cooking stopped at beanie weenies. (Scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee don’t count.) Instant potatoes and TV dinners were not yet known to us, if they even existed.
My roommate, having no imagination, suggested turkey as the main course. We were in the grocery, and I spotted duck nestled next to the turkey breasts. Never having eaten duck, much less cooked one, I thought it would be a noble experiment.
"Do you know how to cook a duck?", my roommate asked, under the circumstances a reasonable question, I suppose.
"No," I replied, "but I don’t know how to cook a turkey, either, so what does it matter?"
Having been exposed to some of my earlier experiments in the kitchen, he was skeptical.
A rather stocky matron of linebacker proportions was guarding the display case, trying to select a turkey.
My roommate decided to approach the problem with his southern charm
"Ma’am, do you know how to cook a duck?"
That was our (his) second mistake.
The woman (I would say lady, except for what happened next) turned on him with invective that would do justice to a veteran sailor. We didn’t understand a word she said, but knew it was bad. Obviously, she was a first-generation refugee from the then-recent European unpleasantness.
Bravely, I eased away, unwilling to be associated with the encounter. What set her off, neither of us could ever figure out. We found a lot of people in that area of Chicago with similar attitudes.
We were afraid to ask for any more advice, so I decided to wing it with the duck (No pun intended.)
Mistake number three.
Mistake number four was not checking the insides of the duck before cooking. Did you know that they hide a small bag of left-over body parts inside a duck when they dress it?
I think it was a liver, gizzard, and neck, but I can’t be sure. After three hours in a bag in a 400-degree oven, it was hard to tell.
Fortunately, they had not included the feet. Probably too big for the bag.
We discarded the parts.
I had the honor of sampling the duck first.
"How is it?," my roommate asked.
"Delicious," I lied, slicing a much larger piece to go with the sweet potatoes and green peas.
"Where’s the gravy?," he asked. "Mama always fixes gravy."
"Tough. I ain’t your Mama." He was beginning to get to me, and my attitude had deteriorated after sampling the duck.
He tentatively sliced a small sliver of duck. He didn’t comment, but later complimented me on the green peas, which are hard to mess up (if you like green peas).
The sweet potatoes were another matter. I wouldn’t admit it, but I later determined that a tablespoonful of cinnamon in a can of sweet potatoes is a bit of overkill. Cinnamon is a powerful spice. Besides, I think I was supposed to use nutmeg.
The coffee and dessert were the highlight of the meal. The apple and mince pies were foolproof. They had already been cooked. My roommate’s contribution to this forgettable feast was warming the pies.
We didn’t talk much about Thanksgiving after that, and he finally insisted on throwing out the rest of the duck a few weeks later when it started turning dark. In the meantime, I had been stubbornly carrying duck sandwiches to work, discarding them before lunch.
The next spring, my roommate moved back to Nashville. He was an only child, and his mama came up to help him get back home. I’m sure she heard many tales of the barbarian he had lived with during his eight months in Chicago.
In September, I went back to Chattanooga and entered graduate school. After a semester, I got a job in Atlanta.
Thinking back on those halcyon days, I often ask myself, "Why did you ever move to Chicago?"
Come to think about it, that was my first mistake.