A Play of Thanksgiving

by Freida Marie Crump (aka Ken Bradbury)

Greetings from Poosey.

Some folks think it’s only an iconic make-believe scene from the Peanuts comic strip, but we really did once dress up in pilgrim costumes in our school pageants and sit down to a meal of cardboard turkey and paper-mache mashed potatoes. I was an Indian, complete with Five and Dime store feathers and war paint. Why my indian wore war paint to a banquet of thanks I still don’t know. There was absolutely nothing either politically or historically correct about any of it and we little ones gladly ate up the lie as hungrily as a Thanksgiving turkey.

I think that the head pilgrim’s opening line was, “Oh, whatever shall we do for Thanksgiving for we have no food!” The fact that it would be another 242 years before President Lincoln actually created the holiday was a fact that the playwright somehow missed. After his announcement of starvation, two of the black-and-white-clad pilgrim children clutched their tummies and fell over in a faint. That was our big opening scene and the cue for my tribe from the fifth grade to enter stage left.

Since my fellow indians were mostly Baptists, we couldn’t wear the required loincloths, but I was Presbyterian and could show a bit of bare Native American leg. We entered on cue, and Mr. Pilgrim said, “Behold! The Noble Savage!” I never did like that line. We were chosen as indians only because the pilgrim costumes were too big for us and our although our scrawny frames made us look like the ones who were starving, that hardly made us savages. This was my cue for my one line, “We bring you corn!” I’d rehearsed this line over and over to my bedroom mirror and was amazed at the various vocal inflections that could be plastered upon a single sentence. I tried “jovial” but that interpretation didn’t seem an appropriate greeting for a colony of British settlers intent on pushing us a thousand miles westward into a life of blackjack dealing. I then tinkered with a tone of menace a la, “You’ll eat this corn and you’ll like it!” My teacher thought that this reading of the line was too scary and that with such a greeting the pilgrims would jump on their boat and start paddling back towards Big Ben. So I settled on something noble and majestic as if this was the greatest gift ever given our nation until the French upped the ante with the Stature of Liberty a few years later.

Then came the miracle. I held out a handful of Burrus Hybrid seed corn, pretended to dig a hole with my bare left foot, and dropped in the seeds. Through the magic of theatre, a stalk of corn shot up out of the stage floor. The school janitor had hidden himself in a trap door and on cue he reduced a three-month growing period into two seconds. Two ears of BX 5D30 stood swaying before the eyes of the grateful pilgrims, we all shouted, “Hurrah!” and sat down to a feast. It must have been a good year for corn for those two ears provided sustenance for 12 pilgrims, 8 indians, plus they magically morphed into turkey, mashed potatoes, and a jar of Ocean Spray cranberry salad. It was indeed a power-hybrid.

After a sumptuous meal that lasted perhaps 12 seconds, we all joined hands and sang, “We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing,” a song written to celebrate the Dutch victory over the Spanish forces in the Battle of Turnhout in 1597.

There was some argument as to which group would get the final star bow. The head pilgrim, who was also the son of the director, claimed that the pilgrims were the real heroes of the play, and I made my first stand for the rights of Native Americans, claiming that without our corn the New York Yankees would be now the Paspahhegh Powows. As with the rest of the American history we learned back then, the fairer-skinned people came out as the heroes.

Of course, as often happens at our early stabs of putting a narration on history, the story was often at odds with the facts. One half of the initial settlers died during their first winter, some even resorting to cannibalism. What starvation didn’t do to them, the mosquitos and native people did, attacking them just 10 days after they landed. A careful reading of American history shows no janitors sticking corn up from the trapdoor.

Despite the turmoil in the world, we continue to be the most blessed among all people on the earth. And if you find yourself short of blessings this Thanksgiving just pick up a newspaper and read a few headlines. I’ll head my thanks list with a school system that now comes a bit closer to the truth, although I did look darned cool in that war paint.

You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.

Journal Post Nov. 14

by Nancy & Keith Bradbury:

…according to Doug it was a pretty good night. He and Ken actually had a decent conversation in the early hours. Very rare because he sleeps 95% of the time. They have been able to reduce the Oxygen flow a bit. (A good thing) Doctors will be in sometime. They usually come in sometime between March and November. That’s as close as we can pin it down.

The most inspiring thing I have seen in weeks…. One of the many pokes and prods Ken gets daily is a test for blood sugar. This morning when this was about to happen the nurse asked him which finger he wants her to use. In the past he just grunted. Today, through the tubes and masks and hoses he opened his eyes, turned his head slightly, pointed to Doug and said,”His”.

Journal Post Nov. 18
by Nancy & Keith Bradbury:

Ken has gone home to his Lord.