My mother and sisters had got up
early to prepare the Thanksgiving dinner. Around 9am my father asked
me to give him a hand; we added four leafs to the dining room table.
With the added length, the table cut the living room in half, one end
of the table ended up right under the dining room window.
By noon most of the relatives had shown up, along with a future
brother-in-law and some close friends of my parents. Everyone was
sitting around the living room, talking, and drinking coffee. I went
into my bedroom and got my football, and walked out into the living
room and asked. "Does anyone want to toss the ball around?"
A couple of uncles and my future brother-in-law came outside
with me. We had been outside tossing the football for about an hour,
when my mother stuck her head out the front door and told us, dinner
in five minutes. My father came out of the house, and stood in front
of the dining room window, watching us throwing the ball. I went
running out for a pass, and ended up in the street, the football fell
short, so I had to walk back and pick up the ball, that's when my
father yelled at me. "John, throw me the ball"
I knew when the football left my hand; I had thrown it too high
for my short Dad to catch it. The football flew just over my Dads
outreached hands, right though the dinning room window.
The football hit the outer edge of a dinner plate making it
flip into the air. As the football continued skipping across the set
dinner table, spoons, forks, water glasses went flying. The dinner
plate came crashing down on a butter dish, sending the butter flying
up, hitting the ceiling were it stuck.
My sister dropped a large bowl of mashed potatoes, just as she
was about to sit it on the table. The mashed potatoes splattered,
covering her, the backs of chairs and relatives. Drinks were spilled,
chairs upturned, end table knocked over, by the mass exodus of my
relatives to the front door to get away from the flying debris.
While all the chaos was going on in the living room, I was
running up the street, to get away. Looking over my shoulder, I saw
one sister come running out of the house with a boom in her hand,
behind her came another sister with a French knife in her hand, I
thought, this is serious.
Everyone was yelling at me to come back, but I just kept
running. I stopped running when I got to a play field, about four
blocks away from the house. I was sitting on a swing, when my father
came walking up to me. "Its alright John, everyone knows it was an
accident."
My father put his arm around my shoulder, and we walked back home.
Thanksgiving Day 1951
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