I wrote this little story a few years ago. A third grade class once read it and made me a little book about it, which I have and treasure. No one else has seen it until now. Use your imagination to put the pictures in place as it is written to eventually be a picture book for kids. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you will take this Thanksgiving to ask your parents or grandparents about the stories they were told from their grandparents.
Pappy’s Grasshopper
and the Thanksgiving Turkey
by
G. L. Gregg
Every Thanksgiving in my house, grandpa would sit all the kids on his lap after their Thanksgiving meal and would tell us stories. We all loved Grandpa’s stories. But, most of all, we loved to eat Pumpkin pie when he was done!
Granda would tell stories about kings and queens, dragons and leprechauns. But the last story was always my favorite. He always told it just before he would stretch, scratch his belly and say “I’m ready for some pie, anyone with me?” It was the story of his great grandpappy and how he caught a Thanksgiving turkey a long, long time ago.
“It all happened way back in ’04,” he would start. “Your Great, Great Grandpappy was sittin’ on the porch one fall afternoon when up the road came your great Uncle Nimrod. He had been off building his own farm in Ohio and had decided to surprise the family by coming home for Thanksgiving.”
Pappy was glad to see Nimrod since he hadn’t seen his son in nearly a year. After they had caught up on the news a while and Grandma had set some water on to boil for tea, Pappy went out to the barn to gather some eggs and feed the chickens.
The next day was Thanksgiving and they still didn’t have a turkey. Pappy had been hunting for one for weeks, but never could come home with one. Grandma said they didn’t need a turkey this year and that she could just make up a mess of corn bread, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, lima beans, and pumpkin pie and they would be just fine. But, now that Nimrod was home, Pappy knew he just had to find a way to catch a turkey for dinner. He had been chasing the old “Knob Gobbler,” all summer and fall, but he never was able to outsmart that bird.
He had snuck up on him down by the fishin’ hole. The gobbler heard him coming.
He took a shot at him as he flew over the knob of the hill behind the farm. He missed.
One morning in October Pappy tracked that bird for three hours on his hands and knees in the grass and mud before Grandma called him in for lunch.
In November he sat by a tree chirping on his turkey call all afternoon. He got very wet in the rain and caught a cold, but no turkey.
Now he had to come up with a better plan to catch that turkey for Thanksgiving. He just had to! Thanksgiving wouldn’t be the same without turkey and stuffing, after all! But, how? As he reached under a little hen to gather her eggs, the sight of his thumb gave him an idea. . . a wonderful idea!
“This old thumb of mine has been with me since I can remember,” he said to himself. “Now I’ll be a pig with no waller if it doesn’t resemble a bug a’ some sort . . . a grasshopper it is!” It was Pappy’s lucky day because if it was one thing he had learned about that old knob gobbler it was that his favorite thing to eat was grasshoppers!”
Pappy had watched that old bird eat grasshoppers for breakfast down by the stream. He had watched him eat grasshoppers in the field for lunch. He had watched him eat grasshoppers on the hill for supper. “Now I’ve got the old buzzard!” Pappy exclaimed as a big smile crept across his face and the chickens startled.
Pappy grabbed his shovel and went straight to work. He climbed up to the top of the knob and there he dug and dug until he had made a big hole right there on top of the hill. Grandma and Uncle Nimrod watched him from the kitchen window and wondered what in the world he was doing.
The next morning Pappy got out of bed before anyone else and went to the barn. There he did something very strange! Instead of gathering eggs, like he did every morning, he painted his thumb! And he didn’t paint it just any color, he painted it green! A green thumb! “Imagine that, kiddies, a green thumb!” grandpa would say when he told us the story. All the grownups would giggle and shake their heads when he said it! Then he painted little black eyes on that thumb and wings and legs, too,” Grandpa continued. “Soon it looked just like a grasshopper, well, sort of.”
Pappy left a note on the stove for grandma. It said “Gone to get us a Thanksgiving turkey. Don’t start peeling the potatoes without me!” and it was signed “Pappy” and had a strange green thumbprint at the bottom.
“Do you know what old Pappy did next?” Grandpa never failed to ask us kids as he retold the story year after year. Even though we knew full well what he did, all the kids would shake their heads and say “No! What?”
Pappy climbed into that hole he had dug and covered himself with leaves and sticks and things. He covered himself completely over—all except for his green thumb.
Having watched the gobbler eat grasshoppers for months, he knew just what to do. He wiggled that green thumb until it ached and he made a low humming sound like “hmmmmmm hmmmmmm hmmmmmmmmm hmmmmmmmm hmmmmmmmmmm” which he imagined must be what a grasshopper sounded like to a hungry turkey.
He wiggled that thumb and hummed in the dirt for what seemed like hours until finally he could hear something coming up behind him. Strange, but it sounded like a person’s feet rather than a turkey. But, he didn’t dare look and risk scaring it away, since he was sure it must be one of that turkey’s tricks.
[Picture Grandma bearing a plucked turkey from the store and laying it by his thumb while that old knob gobbler is peeking from behind a tree].
Grandma wasn’t going to let Pappy miss that turkey again this time!
Soon that old Knob Gobbler came over to investigate that green thing wriggling around in the grass and just as he pecked at that grasshopper, up jumped Pappy with sticks and dirt and leaves and feathers flying all around. When the dust settled, there at Pappy’s feet was his turkey. “Why I declare! I scared the feathers right off the old bird,” he said. He picked it up and headed home.
[Picture of the family having thanksgiving dinner. Pappy with a big, proud, smile on his face (and the green thumb visible). Looking in the window at the family is the old Knob Gobbler]
That day, as the family enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving feast, Pappy exclaimed “Never tasted a bird so good in all my life! Must be all the grasshoppers he ate!”
Grandma just smiled and asked uncle Nimrod to pass the sweet potatoes.