(This article first appeared in the November print edition of the Hendersonian.)
Thanksgiving is a cherished holiday for us, and it’s in large part because of traditions on my wife’s side of the family.
Two of their most beloved traditions have been the Turkey Trot and Turkey Trivia.
The Turkey Trot, not to be confused with a fundraising run of the same name held each Thanksgiving morning in Henderson, took place in my Donna’s little hometown of Caneyville, Kentucky, about 80 miles from here.
The race course was a lightly populated rectangle of residential streets at the edge of town that formed a loop a little less than a mile.
Home from college in the summer of 2002, niece Rachel took up running two or three miles around that route each evening. Her dad, Hub, would drive her out there and watch her run laps so she wouldn’t be out there by herself. “He finally got tired of watching and decided to run too,” Rachel recalled. “He continued running after I went back to school that fall.
“So then because we were now runners and a good number of our family were either into running, walking or biking, we just decided it would be fun to do a family Turkey Trot,” she said.
On Thanksgiving Day 2002, a gaggle of family members and local fitness enthusiasts showed up for the first Turkey Trot.
Hub, who owned the local IGA grocery, offered to pay for T-shirts for the participants. He asked Donna, who had some experience in such matters, to design the shirt, which featured a cartoon turkey and the IGA logo.
Rachel, meanwhile, drew a rudimentary map of the course with wry remarks about “landmarks” along the route.
There was Dead Cat Hill and Spider Ridge. A mixed-breed canine from the neighborhood was declared the World’s Ugliest Dog. Nearby was the World’s Most Beautiful Birdhouse (noteworthy more for its size than its intrinsic beauty).
A house on which construction had begun, but then was abandoned and sat unfinished for years was labeled simply as Haunted Mansion.
Then came a hill she called Gut-It-Up Grade, along which an exhausted stick figure was crawling, accompanied by the encouraging message, “Almost there!” (Ominously, a friend’s house near the finish line was labeled as the “911 station.”)
Rachel’s map specified that runners were required to run two laps while walkers would cover just one. Bicyclists (specifically, her Uncle Denny, an avid biker) had to complete six laps.
There was also an option to swim … in a cold, fetid old pond near the main route. Swimmers were expected to go “24 laps or when you freeze.” Curiously, no one ever chose the swimming option.
As with any proper race, there were rules: No pushing. No corner-cutting. No spitting on each other because “it’s too cold.”
Following the race, Hub hosted an awards ceremony with prizes he grabbed from his grocery. That first year, one of the prizes was a frozen turkey.
The family Turkey Trot was a hit from Year One, and of course it returned the following year, with a new shirt design. The number of participants grew over the years, reaching as many as 40 or 50. And Hub’s “prizes” grew ever-more random and eccentric.
As Hub himself recalled: “Candy, gloves, lotions, soap”—undoubtedly with commentary about why the recipient could use it—“trinkets, cards, books, hand warmers, various OTC meds for pain”—again, accompanied by a snarky observation about their need—and, generally, “too many other junky awards to remember.”
Our household’s yearly tradition was to drive to Caneyville on Thanksgiving morning in time to watch some of what we refer to as the Macy’s Day Parade at Donna’s parents’ house. Shortly before 10 a.m., we would hop into our cars and drive the five minutes out to the race course.
After walking our required lap and witnessing the awards ceremony, it was back to her parents’ house to catch a glimpse of Santa at the end of the parade. Then came a televised dog show, followed by the black-and-white version of “Miracle on 34th Street,” often watched while we played Rumicube on a folding card table.
Finally, it was off to Merry Lynn and Hub’s house where much of the family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, culminating with Hub’s annual Turkey Trivia, where the questions might range from what year Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday (1863) to what state produces the most sweet potatoes (North Carolina) to the name of tallest peak in the country of Turkey (Mount Ararat). He stored the questions in a super-secret location: the “T” volume of the World Book Encyclopedia.
After about 15 years, with Hub retired and the IGA closed, the Turkey Trot came to a quiet end.
But I still have the T-shirts to remember it by.
And we still have Turkey Trivia.
