Sweet and Sour Pie: A Wisconsin Boyhood

Sweet and Sour Pie

183 l Sweet and Sour Pie The first Thanksgiving I can remember was in 1949, a year before Mom, Dad, and I moved to Wisconsin. It was the Thanksgiving when we had rabbit and french fries. The entire Lorain, Ohio, branch of the Crehore family was there. Grandpa and Grandma, Mom and Dad, three aunts, three uncles, three cousins, and I gathered at Uncle Charlie and Aunt Betty’s apartment that day, a grand total of twelve adults and four small boys. Aunt Betty, a home economics teacher, had volunteered to prepare the entire dinner, and its centerpiece was to be a twentypound turkey. The day started early with a family Thanksgiving tradition—a mass rabbit hunt on the original Crehore homestead farm, led by Grandpa, with Dad and my four uncles serving as foot soldiers. They were supposed to hit the briar patches at 6:00 a.m. and be 184 SweetandSourPie home by 11:00. Then they would clean up and arrive at Charlie and Betty’s around noon, with wives and kids in tow. The rabbit hunt was a success. The farm was a couple of miles away on the outskirts of town, and it was hunted only by relatives. That day, the six men collected a total of twenty cottontails, and they even got home on time. But then the best-laid plans began to fall apart. First of all, it was harder than Betty had figured to fit twelve adults and four small boys around the table. Uncle George lived just around the corner, so he went home to fetch a card table and some extra chairs. But once that problem was solved, a bigger one surfaced. The bouquet of roasting turkey, which should have filled the apartment by then, was conspicuously absent. We sat shoulder to shoulder in the living room, and sniffed, and wondered. Before long the truth came out. Betty opened the kitchen door about an inch and summoned her husband. “Charlie,” she called, in a high-pitched and slightly quavering voice, “Charlie, would you come here, please?” Charlie forced a nervous laugh and went into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. We could hear whispers. After about a minute he reappeared, his face as red as his hair. He smiled sheepishly. “There will be a slight delay,” he said. “The little woman forgot to light the oven.” It was at this point that I learned something about forbearance, and leadership, too. Grandpa and Grandma were the senior people present, so everyone turned to them for guidance. Grandma put a hand over her mouth, but her thin little shoulders were shaking and it was clear she was laughing. So was Grandpa. Finally he assumed a straight face and turned to Grandma. “Such is life,” he said. “A twenty-pound turkey will take about five hours, won’t it, Anna?” 185 “At least,” Grandma said. She pointed at me and my cousins. “The little fellas can’t wait that long to eat,” she said. “Why don’t we fry up the rabbits—you said you had twenty of them, didn’t you— and we could make potatoes, and there’s a big colander of string beans at home, we could cook them up with some bacon. Run home and get the beans and the big cast-iron skillets and my boning knife and a pound of bacon and the oil.” “No sooner said than done,” Grandpa said. “Boys, go get your rabbits.” We all lived within a mile or two of each other, so within a half hour the kitchen table was covered with cottontails, beans, bacon, and potatoes. Grandma put her arm around Aunt Betty to comfort her. “Don’t worry, Betty,” Grandma said. “Everyone makes mistakes. Remember that root beer I made for the holidays last year, and every single bottle of it exploded on Christmas Eve? Well, that just goes to show you. “Now,” she continued, “let’s make dinner. Dave and Charlie, fry up the bacon and boil the beans. Betty, slice the potatoes. George and Jack, take the rabbits outside and dress them. I’ll fry them. Charlotte, could you make some biscuits?” And within about an hour and a half we were sitting down to rabbit and potatoes fried crisp in coconut oil, crunchy green beans with bacon, and biscuits full of melted butter. Before I could stick a fork into my first piece...