LETTER FROM THE EDITOR A seat at the table
By J . Damon Cain
Back in the day , back on the farm , when Thanksgiving rolled around , Mom cooked big . Always a 20-something-pound bird bulging with handfuls of stuffing , surrounded on the holiday dinner table by plates and platters brimming with mashed potatoes , candied yams , two or three different vegetable offerings and hot loaves of freshly baked bread . The butter was soft and the gravy boat was filled .
Mom did not skimp on desserts , either . There was the traditional pumpkin pies , typically two , and a sweet and tart gooseberry pie . There were brownies and cakes and candies , too . I particularly liked the soft caramels .
When dinner was served , one of us kids would be chosen to lead the gathering in a prayer of thanks , which we all had down cold . “ Bless us , O Lord , and these , thy gifts , which we are about to receive from thy bounty , through Christ , our Lord . Amen .”
Mom cooked big because we tended to fill a whole bunch of chairs around the table with family , young and old . Great Grandma Cain and Aunt Ada , who had spent part of their lives living in this very house , were honored guests . And there were others , on occasion , who mom or dad had encouraged to stop by if they had nowhere else to go . No one should spend such a holiday alone , mom would say . So , yes , beyond the main dinner table , there were times we ’ d set up the kids ’ tables , too , card tables placed around an adjoining room in that big old Victorian farmhouse . Never knew who might pop in at the last minute , but nobody who pulled into the farm driveway would go home without a take-home paper plate stacked high with leftovers , covered in aluminum foil .
Cooking big came from Mom ’ s side of the union , an Irish Catholic family of four girls and three boys . Grandma Moylan , as stern as they came , kept a large garden out back of her small home and to her last days kept it planted in rows of produce that would feed her until the following year ’ s crop was producing enough to fill a plate .
Mom ’ s people came to the U . S . fro Ireland , right about the time of the Great Famine ( a . k . a . The Great Hunger ), about the time that Iowa was gaining its statehood in 1846 . That was long before Ellis Island was established as an immigration processing center out in the New York Harbor and before the Supreme Court in 1876 declared the regulation of immigration to be a federal responsibility . Michael Moylan was the first of Mom ’ s family to arrive in the states , joining some 4.5 million Irish who immigrated to America between 1820 and 1930 . A little research tells me that between 1820 and 1860 , the Irish constituted over one-third of all immigrants to the United States .
So , yeah , Michael , coming from County Galway , was one of many Irish lads to make the trip across the big pond out to the western prairie of Iowa .
Turns out , he was joined on his journey across the states by a whole knot of Germans who would constitute about two-fifths of Iowa ’ s population . Many of them were German Radical Pietists , who were persecuted in their homeland by the German state government and the Lutheran Church . Members of that sect , the Amish , settled in what became the Amana Colonies .
The German language can still be heard in and around the seven , small , rural communities that make up the colonies in eastern Iowa not far from the University of Iowa in Iowa City . Seems odd now to think that in 1918 , as World War I was raging overseas , Iowa ’ s governor prohibited the use of the German language in public places – including churches – and over telephones . Much later , in the late 1960s and through my own years at Iowa in the ’ 70s , our family spent many a college football weekend eating big in the colonies at the OxYoke Inn or the Ronneburg Restaurant , famous for their bottomless family-style meals . Dad ’ s favorite was Bill Zuber ’ s , in the tiny town of Homestead , its namesake a local baseball legend who went off to pitch for the Cleveland Indians . As the story has been passed down , Zuber was more than just a kid running off with his pals to play organized games like baseball , frowned upon by church elders . Word of his athletic prowess could not be kept secret . One day , when a 17-year-old Zuber was helping with the onion harvest , a scout for the Indians showed up , selected a large bulb and asked Bill if he could hit a nearby barn . Well , of course , young Zuber throws the onion , clearing the barn roof with room to spare .
Zuber went on to have an 11-year career in the majors .
Nowadays , in addition to German , you can hear Spanish being spoken across various rural communities in the state , especially where the migrant workers harvest fruits and vegetables and on the dairy farms and in the meatpacking towns across the vast agricultural landscape that defines the state and helps feeds the country .
Without migrant assistance , the state ’ s farm economy – which consists of more than 325,800 jobs totaling $ 13.9 billion in wages , according to the seventh annual Feeding the Economy – would face a considerable hurdle . And , yes , the price of your food would rise .
Of course , those farm laborers , no matter what language they spoke and whether they were hungry or not , would have been welcomed at the Cain household on Thanksgiving or most any other day . Mom would have made sure of that . As I said , she always had plenty of turkey and mashed potatoes and dressing along with those extra seats at the table for just such an occasion , especially for those who work odd farm jobs to put food on our collective plate each and every day , not just a holiday .
Mom would call it a blessing and would tell one of us kids to say a prayer .
Bless us , O Lord , and these , thy gifts .
J . Damon Cain is editor of West Virginia South and The Register-Herald in Beckley , W . Va . He is a fan of the San Francisco Giants , the Iowa Hawkeyes , good beer , black Labs and his family . Over the course of a 44-year career , he has won myriad journalism awards , including those for writing , newspage design and photo editing .
The Register-Herald photo
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