My Chaotic Thanksgiving

To set the scene, my Grandpa on my Dad’s side of the family owns a small water park called Pine Lake, which is about 25 miles south of Fort Wayne, IN. My grandparents live on the side of this lake, and there is a small log cabin right next door to it. This cabin is a vacation home of sorts for our family and provides a nice bit of respite when school or work gets a little too chaotic. 

The cabin is tucked away in a small forest, very rustic. No central heating/air conditioning, just some box fans and a wood stove. Typically, our family only stays there during the summer when it’s warm, for obvious reasons, but my parents discovered this year that the wood furnace paired with a couple of space heaters can keep the cabin warm down to temperatures of around 25F. So, we decided that this would be a nice, cozy place to celebrate Thanksgiving. My mom put together a “mobile feast,” complete with all of the Thanksgiving essentials like turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and the like. Almost immediately when we got there on Thanksgiving day, my mom got the oven heated up and everything ready to go.

Of course, with the cabin being fairly old and quite outdated, the electrical system sometimes doesn’t quite have the gumption to keep up with all of today’s electrical appliances. Typically, this isn’t a big issue, as if the breaker blows, we just unplug something and flip it back on and get back to whatever we were doing. Unfortunately, this time was a bit different. After running the oven, stove, coffee pot, and space heater all on the same circuit, the breaker blew. Instinctively, my Dad and I unplugged the space heater, then headed over to the breaker panel, and flipped it back on. It didn’t take long to realize that the oven nor the stove were heating up. They were on and displaying their temperature, but lacked the power to keep heated.

Thankfully, all of the food was mostly cooked and just needed heating up. So we just decided not to worry about the oven and to microwave our individual plates. We then enjoyed a very nice (albeit slightly rubbery) Thanksgiving meal. Near the end of the meal, I went over to use the restroom. I had just gotten my hands all soapy and went to turn on the faucet to rinse the soap off, and after about five seconds of using it, the water started coming out slower and slower, until it stopped flowing entirely. I wasn’t really sure what had happened, but after a nice interruption, my Dad concluded that the lack of water was due to the well pump being turned off. Apparently, we hadn’t “flipped the breaker well enough” the first time. During this time though, my Mom and Sister started heavily debating packing everything up and heading back that evening. Thankfully, we got the water working again within just a few minutes.

Although this may not be the wildest Thanksgiving story you’ve read, it was certainly eventful for us, and quite unexpected. However, everything turned out nicely, and we spent the evening exchanging old Thanksgiving stories around the fire in the living room.