In my first two years in the Navy, every holiday was spent on base; every meal eaten in the chow hall. I was a Hospital Corpsman, stationed for two years in the ICU at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, and two years in the E.R. at Naval Hospital, Okinawa, Japan. Hospitals don’t shut down for holidays so it wasn’t uncommon to find me working on Christmas, Thanksgiving or the 4th of July. More often than not I volunteered for those duty shifts so that my married comrades could spend the day with their spouses and children.
While working on Labor Day in Okinawa, I had an argument with a co-worker. I can’t remember how it started, but Jana insisted that the only way to prepare meatloaf was with Welch’s grape jelly. I was equally insistent that such a concoction would be inedible. The upshot was she invited me to dinner at her apartment where she would prove me wrong.
I showed up Tuesday evening and after letting me in she said, “I’ll be right back. I have to go wake my neighbor.” Her neighbor was a fellow Corpsman, who was currently working the night shift on the Labor and Delivery Ward. He and Jana usually ate dinner together. As I was to learn, if she didn’t feed him, he’d starve.
I waited in her apartment and a minute or two later she returned with a sleepy, disheveled man wearing a bathrobe and very little else. His hair stuck out in all directions. Jana said, “Bob, this is the neighbor. Jonathan, this is the friend.” “Hello, Neighbor,” I said. He grunted in my direction and wiped the sleep out of his eyes. By the way, Meatloaf with grape jelly? Don’t try it.
Four months later Jana was back in the states, a happy civilian, and Neighbor and I were living together in a don’t ask, don’t tell situation. Never once in the 18 months that we lived together did I ever call him Jonathan. He was, and will forever be, “Neighbor”. I have to say he benefited from our cohabitation more than I: if I didn’t feed him, he’d starve.
And feed him, I did. I do not eat seafood of any kind; never have. It has been a long standing policy of mine that I don’t eat anything that lives in its own toilet. But Neighbor grew up in Louisiana on such nasty creepy crawlies as shrimp, crawfish, lobsters, and gumbo. Such was my love for this man that his birthday menu consisted of shrimp cocktail, crab legs, and lobster tails. I had salad.
I didn’t realize how much his birthday meal meant to him until I came home from work one day and caught him on the telephone to his grandmother. He was taking notes, but wouldn’t let me see what he was writing. I found out towards the end of November. As usual, I had to work on Thanksgiving, but Neighbor was off. As I left for work that morning he told me not to eat at the chow hall, but to come straight home; HE was cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year. It was silly to get a huge turkey for just the two of us, so he was going to cook his grandmother’s recipe for Beer Can Chicken, home made biscuits, mashed potatoes and home grown pole beans, which had been shipped illegally from Baton Rouge to Okinawa. The other ingredients were already in the fridge, thanks to a clandestine trip to the Commissary the evening before.
The E.R. at Naval Hospital Okinawa treated an average of 200 patients a day, yet for some reason no one ever gets sick on holidays. Some of the nurses and doctors brought in food and it took all of my willpower not to sample the roast turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin pie. The food was kept in the Speculum warmer in the Ob-Gyn exam room, which kept it at an ideal temperature. The ubiquitous rice was reheated as needed in the Bedpan Steamer. I confess it wasn’t as hard to resist the rice as it was the rest of the food.
When my shift was finally over I was ravenous. The ten minute trip home seemed to take hours. When I walked into our apartment I was not greeted by the expected kitchen aromas. Neighbor was in the kitchen staring glumly at a pot on the stove. He looked up when he heard the door close and I thought he was going to cry. “I ruined it,” he said. I peeked over his shoulder at a pot of starchy, watery mush that once upon a time had been boiling potatoes. “How long have they been cooking?" I asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. I got my notes all mixed up so I don’t even know how long I’m supposed to cook them. I think it’s been too long, tho”
“Don’t worry about it,” I assured him. “We don’t need potatoes.”
“Do we need pole beans?” he asked. “They didn’t survive the trip very well. He gestured toward an open cardboard box containing shriveled, moldy beans. It takes a looong time for mail to get from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Okinawa Japan.
“I’m not very hungry anyway,” I said. “Biscuits and beer can chicken should just about fill me up”
“You’re a damn liar,” he said, “See if you can keep a straight face when you tell me how you don’t really like biscuits, because I tried three times and I’ve decided either Memaw lied to me, or I’m just an idiot cause no matter what I do to it, it won’t turn into dough.”
“I abhor biscuits,” I said as my stomach grumbled ominously. “Where’s the chicken?”
“In the oven,” he said. “That’s the only thing I did ri—” He was interrupted by the explosion. The force of the blast blew the oven door open, breaking one of the hinges. When we looked in the oven all that was left of the chicken was a drumstick and half a wing. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the oven were completely covered with sudsy paste made of raw chicken and beer. Neighbor turned to me and said, “I think I should have opened the can of beer before putting the chicken on it.” His lower lip trembled. He tried to hold it in, but he was overcome . . . with the giggles.
When he finally caught his breath he said, “Do you want to go eat in town?” The locals didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving; we had a large selection of restaurants from which to choose.
“Hell, no,” I said. “You promised me a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner, and by God, I expect you to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Not in this oven, maybe,” I added. I went to the living room, trying not to giggle myself.
Thanksgiving, 1995. Grilled cheese sandwiches and Oreo cookies. To this day it remains not only my most memorable, but also my favorite holiday meal.
