An ‘American’ Thanksgiving, 1947

No one knows when Aztec and Mayan Indians of pre-Colombian Mexia domesticated the millions-of-years-old North American wild turkey. But Spaniards who conquered Mexico took fat domesticated turkeys back to Spain in 1519, and they instantly became popular for taste and nutrition.

Though born in Mexico, the home country of domesticated turkeys, I did not know what a turkey was when I left it for the United States in 1943, just under age three. Didn’t know what one was until 1947. I met Mr. Turkey at something my teacher called Thanksgiving – “Dia de Gracias” –  at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic School, run by nuns from Spain. I learned the word “turkey” from the nuns, and something about settlers from “Inglaterra” (England) who ate them.

I first ate turkey at the U.S. naval base in San Diego, filled with hundreds of the very ships that helped win World War II barely two years earlier, down the street from where I lived.

{mosads}There were no “after-school” programs for kids in those days but there was a “Neighborhood House” a block from our apartment, where I went every day to play basketball. Sometimes my great-grandmother would go to the Neighborhood House and enroll me in dancing classes (ugh!) or bull fighting classes (yes!) and, sometimes, had me sit with her in English classes.

On Thanksgiving Day 1947, instead of walking to school, I reported to the Neighborhood House at 10 a.m. and joined my friends on a bus. It took us through the main gate of the San Diego Naval Station, home to thousands of sailors and Marines.

We “debarked” in front of a huge building with a sign I didn’t understand: “Mess Hall.”  Why were we going to a “mess?” I didn’t know much English, but I knew what “mess” meant. In the hall were hundreds of children — Mexican, Black, Filipino children and “gavachos,” or American, kids. Sailors and Marines were all over the place, plus a big fat Santa Claus. I wondered why he was there but was thrilled because I fervently believed in Santa. Christmas music blared from loudspeakers.

Then a Catholic priest, a padre, in a Navy uniform got our attention and asked us to pray in Spanish and English, to give thanks to our Lord for all the blessings we receive for being Americans. I had never been called an American before.

When we finished our prayers (I added a Hail Mary, just in case) all those sailors started bringing out metal trays of food for us. When a tray was placed in front of me, I asked the sailor what was on it.

“Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie,” he said. Ok, but what were these things, I asked in my less-than-perfect English. The nearest American kids yelled out, “Thanksgiving dinner!”

“Thanksgiving Day,” or Dia de Gracias. Great words that one appreciates more and more, the older one gets in America. Certainly, I did.

That day was very special to me, a six-year-old. I fell in love with turkey and still eat it often. What can I say about mashed potatoes with gravy? Pumpkin pie? It was my first American dinner. I also learned one should say a prayer before a special dinner, though it needn’t be a “Hail Mary.”

Later, I would learn the turkey was Mexican-domesticated, that potatoes came from Peru and sweet potatoes from Mexico — but the gifts passed out by Santa’s sailor-helpers that long-ago day were American-made. My gift was a set of “Lincoln Logs,” my first American gift from an American Santa Claus, handed to me by an American sailor.

I didn’t know until years later that the party was an annual event put on by the Navy for “poor” children. You see, I didn’t know I was poor.

In fact, I didn’t know I was an American until a judge told me so, when I was age 15; he said that I had been since the moment I was born in Mexico to an American mother.

Of course, in my mind, I had been a “de facto” American from that day in 1947 when I first gave thanks to God for His (or Her) blessings to America, before I enjoyed my first Thanksgiving dinner.

Raoul Contreras is the author of “The Armenian Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy” (Berkeley Press, 2017) and “The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade” (Floricanto Press, 2016). He formerly wrote for the New American News Service of the New York Times.