Springdale Thanksgiving 

                            by Homer Pheeder 

To the farmer and his family from Hunters, passing through town,
Thanksgiving day is just like any other day in the life of Springdale. Joe
Red Bow who had been sleeping off his first binge of the day over the
steering wheel of his rusty 1955 Ford pickup truck, had awakened needing to
take a leak. When the farmer and his wife stop for a mangy dog sedately
crossing the street, they are greeted by Joe, urinating on his rear wheel.
Without breaking his concentration, Joe cheerfully waves at them with one
hand while the other maintains his aim, a handrolled cigarette bobbing
between his lips, as he cheerily welcomes them to the Town of Springdale and
wishes them a happy Thanksgiving.

There usually is very little of the essence of Thanksgiving in Springdale,
except up at the school where the kids all dutifully cut out silhouettes of
turkeys and draw big pictures of pilgrims to hang in the window or to take
home to their folks. Since many of their parents are members of the
Spokane Tribe, perhaps the hanging of the Pilgrims perhaps might be more
literal. Both sets of drawings end up in the trash can, however,
since this is merely a warmup exercise for Christmas, which in terms
of school artwork, is merely a few days away.

No Thanksgiving, even in Springdale, would be proper without the obligatory
turkey with all the trimmings. Both taverns start ˙early on Thanksgiving
day. Saw horses and plywood are used to create huge serving tables where
tureens of gravy, potatoes, cranberry sauce and the inevitable turkey are
laid out and rapidly consumed by the denizens of the taverns. However, as
the afternoon wanes into evening, and the tavern goers become more
intoxicated with the passing of time, the Thanksgiving Day feasts
take on the air of a macabre carnage. Some diners rapidly dispense with
forks and knives and resort to eating with their fingers, with the result
that the plywood table is littered with bones, gristle and debris as if a
surgeon had recently finished a grimly profane autopsy.

Finally, as dark sighs to itself, adjusting to Springdale's ambience,  and
sighs a second time as if in disgust, various members of the bar crowd
begin to stumble and fumble as they weave their way between the three
taverns, their faces shiny with turkey grease, their clothing smeared
with gravy, cranberry stains and pumpkin pie. Out in front of the Teepee
Tavern, a fight has broken out between two women over a gambling debt,
but both combatants are so drunk, they soon forget what they were
fighting about, and go back inside the tavern for another round of drinks
and more food.

In a quiet corner of the Reservation Tavern sit two old hoboes, who are
eagerly eating second pieces of fresh pumpkin pie. Most recently off the
evening freight train, there still resides in their memories another meal
that they had refused, scarcely hours earlier. For months they had resided
in the mission in Spokane, while the older of the pair got a pesky hernia
fixed at the VA Hospital. They had been looking forward to the big
Thanksgiving Day feast at the mission until they learned that the mission
would be delivering a "special" sermon to the men, just ahead of serving the
feast. Not being at all disposed to religion, they had hurriedly forsaken
the mission in favor of a northbound freight.

Now, hours later, full of food with no strings attached, they  momentarily
became the essence of Thanksgiving in Springdale. As they wearily swing into
an empty boxcar heading for Northport, later that night, their pockets
wisely fulled to overflowing with toilet paper (a luxury to a honest-to-God
hobo), they were indeed thankful on Thanksgiving in Springdale, even if they
were heading the opposite direction.