My Scottish Thanksgiving

I have always been a bit rash. Especially in my twenties, when, after college and independent for the first time, life’s infinite opportunities seemed up for grabs. 

For example, I once read a magazine article touting Boulder, Colorado, as the best outdoor town and then figured out how to spend the summer there. I’d loaded up my ice-blue 1988 Corolla with a bicycle in the roof rack and set off alone across the country. No matter that my measly teaching salary at the time was a ten-month contract that left me without any income for the summer. 

Or, when I learned of an exciting opportunity, say, the Fulbright Teaching Exchange Program, I’d apply. This is how I ended up teaching maths (yes, in the UK, it’s plural) in 1991 in the highland town of Forres, Scotland, where Shakespeare located Duncan’s castle in Macbeth. I was twenty-eight, optimistic, and clueless. It was a year of defining moments, unforgettable experiences, heartbreaking goodbyes, and my first and only time hosting a Thanksgiving meal. 

It wasn’t just that I’d invited the nine members of the maths department and their plus-ones to a traditional Thanksgiving meal in a house with a dining table, dishes, and cutlery for four people. The Church of Scotland easily solved that problem, it turned out, when Phyllis, who lived next door, convinced the local parish to loan me a trestle table to seat eighteen plus linens and the church catering porcelain and silver. But when I arrived at R G Macdonald’s butcher shop to order a turkey more than a month in advance, he asked the question I hadn’t considered: “Do you have an oven big enough to bake a twenty-seven-pound turkey?” 

I thought back to the dorm-room-sized refrigerator and small oven in the Elgin townhouse of the Scottish exchange teacher who was back in Pennsylvania teaching my classes while I taught hers and in whose house I now inhabited. 

“Nope. Definitely not.” I told Mr. Macdonald. 

“It would be best then if I cooked and delivered it? Perhaps with some oatmeal stuffing?” It was more a statement than a question and offered in the practical and generous manner I will forever associate with the Scots.

When I relayed the story of this grand gesture the following day in the carpool, I shared with three male colleagues—all highland natives ranging in ages from mid-forties to early sixties— they howled with laughter. They teased that I, the young blue-eyed blonde Yank, had shamelessly charmed the butcher Macdonald into the home delivery of a stuffed twenty-seven-pound bird. 

It was good-hearted fun. These guys, physics, history, and computer science teachers, were the big brothers and close uncles I never had. They included me in their pub meals over the school lunch hour and invited me around for home-cooked dinners and walks with the dog. They introduced me to their families and wives, who invited me to Scottish country dancing lessons and drinks afterward. They advised me about everything from troublesome students to joining a jogging club and where to get the bike I’d had shipped over and assembled myself checked out. “Just in case I’d missed something important—like brakes.”

When it came time for actual meal planning, after accounting for the seven-hour time zone difference, I went to the front of the house, stood in the drafty entryway, and dialed the ten-digit phone number of my childhood on a British Telecom rotary phone to call my mom for recipes. Electronic mail wouldn’t become a household thing for two more years. While we had access to the Internet at school, Mom, who still has an AOL account thirty years later, didn’t have email, let alone a personal computer. All the same, I was of the cordless phone generation, and even then, standing in the front entryway to make a telephone call felt a bit Victorian. 

Mom, thrilled to see me making the domestic effort to cook and entertain, an interest she and I did not share, copied the family recipes onto lightweight onion-skin paper and mailed them via international airmail. Three days later, the Royal Mail postman who delivered the mail morning and afternoon by bicycle put it through the letter slot in the front door. 

The rash idea of I think I’ll host a Scottish Thanksgiving was getting complicated. 

This became even more obvious when I went to the local grocer in search of pumpkins. If I thought cooking and mashing an actual pumpkin for pumpkin pie was being resourceful. Imagine my surprise when the grocer suggested I telephone the nearby Royal Air Force base to speak with an American pilot stationed there who might know where I could procure a pumpkin. When I asked the grocer for the name of this pilot, she didn’t have one. “Just ask for the American. They’ll be able to connect you.”

This wasn’t as outlandish an idea as it might’ve seemed before I came to live in Scotland. One day shortly after my arrival, a sudden rainstorm chased me into the backseat of a taxi as I was walking home with groceries. Occupied initially with getting the shopping bags sorted, I suddenly realized that the taxi was en route to the house where I stayed. Confused, I asked the driver if I’d provided an address. “Aye, no need. I heard your accent and knew you were The American.” 

That my presence and address were common knowledge in the small highland town unnerved me at first. But gradually, it began to feel oddly comforting—something like belonging. 

Nevertheless, when I dialed the public number for RAF Lossiemouth and asked if they could please connect me with the American pilot stationed there, it still stunned me when, after identifying myself to the woman on the other end of the line, she said: “Ellen? How wonderful. I’ve been hoping to meet you! Every time I call anywhere locally, they hear my accent and automatically think that I’m Ellen and treat me with great kindness.” 

“That’s both hilarious and incredibly sweet,” I replied. 

I’d assumed she was the pilot—this was the 20th century, after all—but when I explained about the pumpkin and how the grocer had suggested I call, the woman explained that her husband was the pilot. 

“He’s flying a training sortie to England next week, and I’m sure he can pick you up a few cans of pumpkin at the commissary there. He’s already done it for us. No problem.” 

The following week there were three tins of LIBBY’s 100% Pure Pumpkin and (surprise!) candied cranberries on the kitchen shelf. 

First, the Church of Scotland. Then, the butcher Macdonald. And now, the Royal Air Force. They say it takes a village, but WOW. 

Though I did get the carpool guys to help me move the living room furniture upstairs to make room for the trestle table, there wasn’t much left for me to do by the time Thanksgiving day finally arrived. I set out the Church of Scotland china, made mashed potatoes, a green bean casserole, and two pumpkin pies, and placed the cranberries in a pretty silver catering bowl. Then I served the butcher Macdonald’s delicious turkey and stuffing delivered piping hot and right on time,  and had plenty of single malt whisky and Irn-Bru, Scotland’s glowing orange soft drink, to make it a true Scottish Thanksgiving.