Sybil Bruncheon's "Thanksgivings Past".... tonight's specials...

Today, there is so much resentment against the so-called "1%" and their callousness towards a struggling working class, but did you know that in times past they were no better?? It's true! It was a popular tradition on Thanksgiving for the rich to drop by each other's penthouse mansions and glorious townhouses for what they called their "Pricey Potlucks". Every guest would show up with something incredibly exotic or luxurious and, in the spirit of "conspicuous consumption" and even waste, they would dine or dispose of everything within reach... Here, a llama, just bought from the children's petting zoo is being taken to Lord Cecil Crayol's mansionette on 5th Avenue across from Henry Frick's place. Lord Cecil's money, of course, came from the "Crayola Crayon" empire, and Henry Frick made his money in steel... they apparently either ate the llama or had it trample a dwarf... or both... (or maybe THEY ate the dwarf... and had the llama made into a fluffy bath-mat... whatever...)

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Sybil Bruncheon’s THANKSGIVINGS PAST... Franklin & Eleanor... "the hungry years!"....

Hello, Friends. It is a little-known fact that during the hardest years of the Great Depression, even the White House had to budget...even during Holiday time!! It would not have been politic to have been seen feasting on sumptuous dishes and reveling in the plenty that America had been known for only a few years earlier when much of the country was now dragging through bank collapses, farm foreclosures, and dust bowl droughts. The clever chefs in the White House came up with an alternative. They prepared nutritious and fairly flavorful entrees out of an unlikely source... strange sea-life from the deepest parts of the ocean.

Oceanographer William Beebe in the famous Bathysphere designed by Otis Barton dived to a depth of nearly a mile and found the most bizarre and somewhat frightening wildlife down in the darkest regions where no sunlight ever reached. Carrying creatures back for the Smithsonian Institute and the National Geographic Society, it was soon determined that these new fish species were edible during a misunderstanding in a museum cafeteria when rare specimens were mistaken for a grocery delivery to the cooking staff. The cooks were alarmed when they first took the animals from the loading dock, but assumed that the Roosevelts had brought some exotic delicacies back from foreign dignitaries.

Sadly, the odd dishes they improvised were immediately valued at nearly $1.5 million dollars when the cost of the deep-sea technology, trial-and-error device testing, military and scientific staff salaries, college and research grants, and special materials and instrumentation manufacture were all tallied. That would make the cost of every forkful of the "roasted turkey" about $5800. Both the White House and the scientific community were mortified... But the public only read in the papers that the First Family were exploring other, more economically responsible Thanksgiving dinner choices during hard times... and, after all, Mrs. Roosevelt, after the first few bites declared... "Why, Franklin!... it tastes just like tuna fish!"

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