The first Thanksgiving I ever spent away from my family was one worth remembering. It had its highs: eating an awesome traditional Thanksgiving meal complete with my favorite orange rolls from All Steak in Cullman, Alabama, with a view of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and its lows: a visit from the NYC fire department, and a run in with an army of New York City's homeless population.
Truthfully, the opportunity to spend it with my dear friend Cindy, one of the best southern cooks I know, at her New York City apartment overlooking Time's Square, definitely took the edge off of any tinge of homesickness I may have been feeling. She planned to host all of our friends who didn't get to go home for the holiday in style. In her tiny apartment that had once been home to Fred Astaire, we rearranged furniture, brought in extra tables, and set the scene for what was to be an unforgettable day. I had even brought a dozen rolls from home to be baked fresh for the occasion.
Fifteen or twenty friends packed into the place that was steaming with the delicious smells of turkey, dressing, pies and casseroles. There was probably enough butter in that one meal to choke a whale, that's how good it was. Well, about the time we sat down to eat, we all start to smell smoke. Probably something on the stove...
No. I looked out the window and reflecting in the windows of the building across the street were flames! They are coming from the building next door! Connected to us! Well, all I could think of were my rolls that were still in the oven. Everybody evacuated the building except for me. When the smoke got too thick I donned some oven mitts, grabbed my precious pan of rolls, and hopped on the hundred year old elevator which creaked slowly down to the first floor. Then I ran out onto 44th Street where hundreds of homeless people were waiting for a Thanksgiving meal that was being served inside by the church on the lower floors of the building.
A better man than me might have shared those rolls with the less fortunate, but frankly, I didn't haul them on that plane with me all the way from Alabama to give them all away. I'm sorry. Is that bad?
After about twenty tense minutes that felt like hours, we all got to go back inside. The fire next door had been put out and we all got to have our meals. Santa must have already passed by this point -sometime between the fire truck's sirens and the cross-dressing homeless guy who kept eying my orange rolls.
The point here is: You never know what your getting into when you break with tradition, but you might just end up with a great story to tell if your rolls don't catch fire or get eaten by a trans gender homeless guy.
4 days ago