Holiday Cooking Story

Not my cooking. I wasn’t there. I heard this story from my dad.

Decades ago – I think that this was during the 60’s, when my dad was a teenager – one of dad’s uncles got hold of a decommissioned school bus. My relatives installed bunk beds and painted it white. Voila – they had a DIY recreational vehicle. They had The Bus.

My family took The Bus to family reunions in Ohio. More importantly: every November, as soon as the Thanksgiving leftovers were packed, the men in my family used “The Bus” for their big deer hunting trip. To Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. “Punxy.” You know, the town with the Groundhog.

My dad hunted with his uncles, brothers, and cousins, and family friends. They sat on cold tree stumps in muddy fields to greet the rising sun. They all slept in The Bus. And then, a few days later, they brought The Bus back to their home in North Huntingdon, hopefully with much venison.

Well, they did this up until the year that The Bus got tired and just could not move any longer. While they were still in Punxy. They got permission from an elderly landowner to leave The Bus in her field there. For decades. In exhange, my dad and his relatives all went up there through the year to mow the grass in her field. And every November, they all came to stay there, at The Bus, the family hunting camp.

I visited The Bus during a few of dad’s summer lawn mowing trips. Oh, yes, my family still had The Bus when I was a teenager. It was exactly how it sounds – an old, old school bus parked in the middle of a field near some woods. With no niceties, such as plumbing. No plumbing of any kind. Not even a latrine. Oh, yeah, it was right next to a creek. One summer my sister K. cut her foot on a broken bottle or a fishing hook or something in that creek.

Anyway, the group who camped out at The Bus included a family friend who everybody called “Ham.” I never met Ham. However, Ham was the camp cook. The men kept a few old pots and pans, as well as old dishes and utensils, at The Bus so that they could eat their meals there.

One year on the first day of deer season, the men had an early breakfast in the dark. Probably scrambled eggs. They put their dishes into a large pot. The planned to later add water and dish detergent, boil the entire thing on their camp stove, and thus wash their dishes in this Bus that had no modern conveniences.

After a long, cold day of hunting, they returned to The Bus and to the stew that Ham made. As the guys got to the bottom of the pot that held the stew, their serving spoon came into contact with something. Dishes. Ham made his stew in the same pot that they had thrown their dirty breakfast dishes, while the dishes still sat at the bottom.

Happy Thanksgiving and I hope that your dirty dishes aren’t actually in your dinner!

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Last weekend, Jonathan and I cabin camped at Clear Creek State Park. A rafter of 5 turkeys crossed in front of us in the park’s camping area. (We actually thought that we saw a murder of turkeys, but Google just taught me that we actually saw a rafter of turkeys.)  We took the scenic route home from Clear Creek, and stopped for a few minutes in Punxy so that I could take a picture of this sign: