A Two-Dog Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving to most of us means a time when friends and family get together to enjoy eachother's company around a table of food lovingly prepared. We often reflect on the things for which we are thankful before we eat. Some years giving thanks may seem a little more difficult: we may be more pessimistic and resentful of misfortunes beyond our control.

But Thanksgivings during times like this can also make us reflect more fully upon the things that we take for granted every day. Indeed Thanksgivings of the past may have had more meaning to people simply because making a living was so much more difficult and precarious. Dennis once learned this lesson when he spent a couple of years in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.


Dennis was a southern California boy. It was the early 1970s and he had been recently discharged from the Marine Corps having served in Viet Nam. He grew his hair long, took a few college courses then pondered his next move.

One day Dennis met a young man who told him about life as a caretaker for an inactive gold mine near Iowa Hill, an old gold rush town in the southern Sierras east of Sacramento. Lots of young people from the city were "caretaking" up there at that time and "getting back to nature." Caretaking was not a paid position. But what it did provide was a free place to stay in a beautiful spot--better yet, it was remote and there wasn't much authoritative scrutiny. There they grew their own food or hunted for it. And what they had they shared.

Dennis was looking for just such an adventure and it didn't take much encouragement for him to start digging around for for the owners of the once-famous California Morning Star gold mine. The owners, located in Chicago, were only too happy to have person to watch over their 163 acres at no cost to them. All there was left to do was to pack up a few belongings and convince his girlfriend's mother to let her daughter accompany him. She consented. So, they loaded up a Volkswagen bus with their gear and two dogs then set off for the gold-filled hills of the Sierras.

Iowa Hill sits atop steep-sloped hills through which the north fork of the American River flows. The flanks of these hills once thronged with men sifting through one of the richest deposits of gold in California during the latter half of the 1800s. The town was so prosperous that it was once considered for the site of the state capital. But the gold played out. The gold rush town shrunk in size through attrition and finally fire. When Dennis arrived, there was just the basic services for the area: a post office, a three-can grocery store, and a tavern--all in one building.

What was left of the huge Morning Star operation was a couple of old out buildings. The only one that afforded anything resembling comfort was the foreman's office, which at that point was little more than a tumble down corrugated steel shack. Dennis affectionately called it the cabin. There was no electricity, no running water save that which flowed out of a mine tunnel next to the cabin. There was an outhouse nearby: a privy built over a mine shaft. Dennis and his girlfriend set about making a living. They hunted deer for fresh meat, they grew vegetables and they established friendships with their far flung neighbors. What the community produced, they shared along with friendships, the type that are established by people who depend upon eachother for survival.

Now, gold rush miners had a long tradition of creating what comfort they could afford given the various odd materials they had at hand--comfort being a place to warm their bones, and a hot cup of coffee. There in the center of the foreman's shack of the Morning Star mine stood a silent tribute to that frontier ingenuity: a wood stove made of two 55 gallon drums. The drums were mounted sideways on a stand with one stacked on top of the other. The bottom drum held the fire while the top was used as an oven. Atop this drum was a welded rack that once provided a stove for coffee, and skillets of beans, bacon and flapjacks.

This stove was the center of Thanksgiving that year at the Morning Star Mine. With no refrigeration available, careful plans were made for buying a turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and pies, all to be consumed within one or two meals. The nearest town to buy the ingredients for the thanksgiving meal was in Colfax, a day's journey along a twisting, dusty mountain road.

The next day, with a plentiful supply of aromatic alder wood, the fire was lit in the stove and the turkey was placed inside. A vigil was kept to ensure that the fire didn't burn too hot or too cold during the long hours of roasting. Drippings were periodically poured over the bird while it roasted in the fragrant smoke. Pumpkin and apple pies were baked in the oven just above the turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing were cooked on top.

Finally after many hours of watchful cooking, the feast for two was complete. The table of wooden planks was laid out with tin plates, enamel cups, and knives forks and spoons. A few test slices of the turkey were taken to ensure the bird was done. Dennis said it was the best turkey he had ever tasted in his life, roasted to perfection, tender and juicy with a delicate smokey flavor. He and his girlfriend decided to go for a walk before they ate to whet their appetites. They walked out the door with little more on their minds than the feast that was to come.

Dennis speculates on what happened next. Arrow and Flower were good dogs who rarely got into trouble. They never raided garbage cans, they eagerly but politely received snacks that were given to them...they always dutifully obeyed. Perhaps it was a scrap of turkey that was tossed their way before Dennis left the cabin. Perhaps it was the irresistible aromas that tantalizingly wafted about the cabin for hours that day. There might have been a tentative peek at the table top, a sniff... There certainly must have been a thought about actions and consequences because when the two dogs trotted up to greet Dennis and his girlfriend upon their return, they both stopped, dropped their heads, and tucked their tails underneath them, refusing to make eye contact. Both dogs were as round as 55 gallon drums.

So the Thanksgiving that took two days of hard work to prepare was gone. What was there to be thankful for? A roof over one's head, a warm place to be on a cold day, love between two people, family, the loyalty of friends in times of need--animals included. They weren't starving. Certainly the dogs weren't. Sometimes we just need to strip away the layers in our lives and discover the things that sustain us, and for those we can be truly thankful.