The other day I was speaking with a friend…she wasn’t my friend, mind you; she seemed to have better taste than that.  Still, she struck me as being a very nice person who has actual friends.  Anyway, she was telling me about a place she visited in Nebraska.  Yes, there are places to visit in Nebraska…  there’s no place NEXT to them, but there are places to visit. 

            This particular place was a historical site at which had been found the fossilized remains of prehistoric camels.

            “Hey!” you’re thinking at this article, “there are no camels in North America… or even Nebraska!”

            You’re right, and that’s exactly my point.  Consider the significance of the fact.  This means there were people on this continent long before anyone thought there were – and they had ZOO’s!  Imagine.  A prehistoric people in America with a thirst for knowledge, a desire for culture and the need for someplace to take their kids on Saturday afternoon.  And since these camels are from Africa or the Middle East or some continent which has already fallen into some ocean or other, it means these people had intercontinental commerce and consequently, intercontinental travel and probably a trade deficit, but that’s not the point of this article.  I mean, think about it.  They had to get the camels over here somehow and they couldn’t just slap a FED-EX sticker on them and send them off.  This was way before the first cargo ships (which were made of gopher wood and measured in cubits…I think).   

            To accomplish this monumental task these early zoologists enlisted the aid of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’s Marlin Perkins, who was a young man at that time.  Since they didn’t have a written language at that time, Marlin was known by an odd geometric symbol, which meant “the wildlife biologist who will later be known as Marlin Perkins.”  What Marlin did was travel to the Middle East, which was then the Southwest because you had to approach it from the Northeast.  And even though they crossed what is now the International Date Line, it hadn’t really developed into an actual line then – it was then only a hyphenated open space, so they had no agreed upon point from which to determine direction so they just figured from where they were at the time.  Follow?

            At any rate, to help him secure these dromedaries from the wild, Marlin likely enlisted the aid of Honest Assim’s New and Used Camel Oasis.  (Marlin didn’t actually start capturing wild animals until he hired his young, burly, gullible protégé, Jim.)

“What you need to do, Jim, is take these two natives, wade into the water and grab that great white shark.”

“That looks a little dangerous, don’t you think, Mr. Perkins?”

“Aw, kid!  We used to do it that way all the time.  If it makes you feel any better you can shoot them with this tranquilizer dart from this $17.98 Daisy Air Pistol and then catch him in this seaweed net.”

This is how Jim reached the level he has today as the second most stitched-up man in show business after Evel Kneival.

            Where were we?  Oh, yes.  So this group would barter something for the camels – say wooly mammoth tusks, or better yet, a wooly mammoth – and then head back to Nebraska, which back then was called something more primitive, like…  Arkansas.  In order to return with these camels, or even get there in the first place, these daring zoologists had to cross the Bering Land Bridge, the remains of which now stand on either side of the Bering Strait, so called even though it’s kind of curved.  Now the bridge itself was built by early engineers as a means to get to Las Vegas for conventions and to follow escaping caribou which would swim aroundand circle back to take the beach a couple hundred yards to the south.  The hunters didn’t know that, however, so they had prehistoric construction crews build the bridge out of land.  This only makes architectural sense because this was, of course, before the “iron” age or the “bronze” age or even the “stone” age.  This was as far back as the “dirt” age, so the early engineers used dirt for everything:  bridges, houses, office buildings, computers, chicken dinners – everything.

            Finally, when the journey was complete, they placed the camels in cages – which were, of course, made of dirt.  That’s why today there is no evidence of the pens used to house the different animals.  Because of this, some archaeological scientists have come up with the inane idea that these camels found their way over here by themselves and have since become extinct.  This is the kind of far-fetched supposition which gives science a bad name.  Take all those mammoths found in the tar pits.  Archaeologists would have us believe that these animals were so stupid that one of them got stuck in the muck and the rest of them just followed him in. 

            I think it’s rather self-centered to believe that just because these mammals are not humans or that they aren’t evolved to the point of low-fat cuisine that they automatically have the intelligence of all-star wrestlers.

            I think it proves that these early people domesticated these animals – and used them on road crews where they were accidentally caught in the hot oil used to asphalt the road.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy Thanksgiving – the hunters’ holiday.

Why, you ask, do I refer to Thanksgiving as the hunters’ holiday?  Elementary, my dear Watsonian-type person!  None of the other holidays apply, except maybe the opening day of pheasant season, but that’s only a holiday on the state level…I think.

Allow me to explain.  The pilgrims who came to this land were used to hardships.  Most of them were able to do many things because at that time it was necessary to have myriad abilities in order to survive.  They were not able to run to the yellow pages to get the goods and services they required.  After all, there were no phones then so the only thing the yellow pages were good for was as booster chairs for little kids.

These people were their own grocers and butchers, tailors and blacksmiths; corporate lawyers and nuclear physicists, investment bankers and…well, you get the idea.  The needs they had they filled on their own or went without.  Obviously, when they got to this new land, they didn’t run right over to the store to pick up some fresh produce, a nice roast and a video to watch after dinner.  NO!  They bought Manhattan for a box of odds and ends worth $24.00[1], but they couldn’t get anything to eat there for another 6 or 7 years so that didn’t help them much.  And they didn’t run out and start harvesting those amber waves of grain, either, because before they got here no one had planted any amber wave grain, which I believe came much later – from Russia…I think.

What they did do when they got to this new land was run out and start Christmas shopping.  After all, it was already the middle of December before they even got off the Mayflower.  They had to unpack from the move, find the Christmas lights and the wrapping paper and those plastic yard Santas they had stored away.  It was a busy time.  But then, we’re not talking about Christmas yet.  We’re talking about Thanksgiving and whatever we can tie in with it.

Now, these English people from the Netherlands (it’s a long story) were ill prepared for the conditions that awaited them at Plymouth.  This was, in part, due to the limited supplies they were carrying.  It also had a great deal to do with the fact that they were supposed to land somewhere in Virginia where the weather is a bit more hospitable than it is in Massachusetts.  One reason for this error was the maps they were supplied with at the time.  If you look at a map of New England, you’ll see all sorts of roads running to the coast from the west, but very few, if any, from the east.  You can’t blame them for being off course a bit.  Besides, there was no one standing on the shore looking out to sea, saying:

“I’m getting worried, Tonto.  They should have been here by now.”

The point I was trying to pin down here is that there were no crops to harvest when the Mayflower landed and no native plantlife to use for food in December.  Their survival depended on their ability to hunt.  This ability probably wasn’t all that great since about half of them didn’t make it through the unusually mild New England winter.  The reasons for the somewhat high mortality rate at the time, however, may have been something besides the hunting skills of the colonists.  Actual dangers such as disease, exposure to the elements or improperly prepared Japanese blowfish, for example.  The optimistic view would be that the hunters of the group kept the other half of the people alive through the winter and until they saw a return on their crops.

Of course, Thanksgiving could really be the farmers holiday because the harvest was fairly good the following year – actually, percentage-wise, it was a lot better than the previous year, since there wasn’t actually a harvest the year before because they weren’t even THERE yet.  This is where the government agricultural statistics began the reputation for unfailing exactness:

“The harvest looks to be a bit better this year.”

“Well, when we got here last winter we picked three frozen strawberries that the birds hadn’t gotten, an ear of corn and some pine bark.  That gives us an increase over last year of 43,479,000 percent.”

“Yep, a little better.”

It could, however. Be argued that Thanksgiving is the fisherman’s holiday.  One of the reasons for the success of the harvest was the method of planting corn, taught to the pilgrims by the Native Americans.  This entailed dropping a fish into the ground with the seeds when planting.  The nutrients from the breakdown of the fish served as fertilizer and thereby greatly increased the growth of the plants.  Unfortunately, this must be the method still used today for growing zucchini, which is why anybody with a garden and one zucchini plant is always trying to get rid of the stuff by doing things like giving it to strangers on the street or making up wonderful, innovative recipe’s such as zucchini cake or zucchini ice cream or zucchini chocolate topping…

Then again, Thanksgiving could actually be the Native Americans’ holiday since they were there to help the pilgrims survive the new wilderness.  As a matter of fact, the two Indians who primarily helped the early colonists had once been held captive by English-speaking people, which is why they knew a little of the language in the first place…and they STILL helped them.  Obviously they hadn’t been around much and didn’t see what was coming.

Come the think of it, Native Americans may not really want to be reminded that this holiday is in large part due to them.  I know I wouldn’t.

Today, the holiday we celebrate on the fourth Thursday of the month – or the third Thursday after the fourth Wednesday – or the last Thurs…  Anyway, we celebrate the holiday, which was decreed on November 26, 1789 by President George Washington.  It’s easy to see that this was early in our nations’ history or the holiday would be held on a Monday.

The very first Thanksgiving, however, was declared by William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth colony, in the fall of 1621.  He felt it would be good for morale and increase production values.  Oh, sure!  He said it was a time set aside to give thanks for their survival and the gathering of the bountiful harvest, but he knew the result he was looking for because every night, after everyone else had gone to bed, he would sit in his cabin and listen to motivational tapes by candlelight…I think.

Anyway, the rest of the settlers were thankful for their survival and all they had been given before winter set in again.  So they set aside three days (Yes, three whole days.  Those ancestor-folk took everything very seriously.)  and invited the neighboring Native Americans to a first-class, early American celebration.  They had the traditional pumpkin pies, corn and other dishes made from native plants, which the Indians had taught them to grow.

In truth, Thanksgiving was and is a holiday for everyone of all faiths and beliefs.  A time to gather together friends and relatives and let them know you are thankful both for them and for what you have.

But you know, the main course served at that first Thanksgiving was wild turkey and venison.  I think that gives the hunters just a little bit of an edge.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[1] At this point I would like to alert you to the fact that this is not actually the group of pilgrims who bought the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans who were there at the time.  I inserted this part for artistic license.  I an allowed to do this because I carry a Federal artistic license from the Bureau of Literary Questionability;  lic. # 6Q4R2D2!@B, Class 3C