The debate will go on for centuries: How do you take your cranberries at Thanksgiving dinner? Homemade sauce? Cranberry-orange compote? Cranberry Jello salad (and do you use cranberry, strawberry, or red raspberry Jello)? Or do you just go for the wiggly jellied delight straight from the can? What about cranberries in the dressing?
I am for all things cranberry and will consume them pretty much however they are served. They’re terrific on a leftover turkey sandwich, too. And, for the record, my father makes the best cranberry Jello salad on the planet.
We’re taking a trip back in time to the week of Thanksgiving 1954. The ad for the local White Stores featured Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce right at the top, a 16 oz can for 23 cents. Each can purchased came with a free turkey-shaped cookie cutter, a 10-cent value! There were instructions for using it to make turkey shaped cranberry slices and save the excess to use on toast the next day.
I know that prices are all relative to the economy at the time, but seeing chuck roast for 33 cents a pound could make you lay down and cry. The roast was cheaper than the Old Timer Sausage (45 cents/LB), the Lay’s Smoked Hams (59 cents/LB) and the Morning Glory hens (53 cents/LB). McCormick spices were 15 cents a can (except the nutmeg, it was 19). In another giveaway, you could get a bowl scraper with each package of Pillsbury pancake mix. You could snag all the ingredients to make marshmallow fudge for 59 cents.
I was talking with one of my neighbors the other day about plans for the holiday, and she told me a story about working at the White Stores in Fountain City the day before Thanksgiving, 1954. This was during her senior year at Gibbs High School. She couldn’t remember what time the store closed, but she knew it was near closing because her father was already in the parking lot waiting to take her home. As expected, the store was pretty full with shoppers stocking up for the next day’s cookfest.
She’s ringing up one customer after another until suddenly there’s a masked bandit waving a gun in her and the other cashier’s general direction. Robbed. At gun point. The day before Thanksgiving. There was trouble trouble trouble trouble trouble right here in Fountain City. I am retroactively appalled. This was not like Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving children.
No, per news reports at the time, it was a couple of stocking faced, red capped, disheveled, and stinky miscreants who barged in and shook down the store, including the roughly 40 customers they ordered face down on the floor. The cashiers emptied their tills into paper bags. A young bookkeeper managed to hide some of the cash and checks already in the back office. The store manager, Ray Jones, was on the phone with his brother, Ralph, when the intruders entered the store. Instead of hanging up, he simply set the receiver down. Ralph heard his brother say “don’t shoot” over the phone. He hung up and called the police.
A couple of store clerks ran out the back of the store during the robbery to attempt to slash the tires on the getaway car. The bandits made their escape just before police arrived. They switched cars somewhere along Essary Road (the one they drove to White Stores they stole out of Blount County). Another store clerk tried to give chase, but wrecked his car into a light pole. It’s estimated they made off with $1,500-$2,000. They were never caught.
So, for this holiday, I am going to borrow from my beloved and much missed mother: mind your manners and do good things today.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
Sources: The Knoxville Journal digital archives
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This is another classic Beth. I was only 1 when this happened but I’m sure our family was very upset about the whole thing! Crazy Thanksgiving for Fountain City back then! Your Cuz, Dennis
Beth, thank you for telling this story. My mother and I were there sitting in chairs at the near the cash registers and from doors , probably there for customers who were waiting for rides as we were. One of the gunmen ‘tapped’ the cashier nearest us in the chairs , made eye contact with Mother, “tapped” his gun on the shoulder of a young woman we knew to hurry her up. As the gunmen in their masks made of women’s hosiery were exiting, one of them yelled “don’t follow or we’ll shoot!” I was a pre-teen and petrified – so petrified I was afraid to get out of the car when we got home. Sometime later I heard speculation that the gunmen had sat in Kay’s Ice Cream just across Broadway- watching and plotting. I think of this every Thanksgiving Eve. Your story filled in some details for me.
Beth, thank you for telling this story. My mother and I were there sitting in chairs at the front – probably there for customers who were waiting got rides as we were. One of the gunmen ‘tapped’ the cashier nearest us in the chairs , made eye contact with Mother, “tapped” his gun on the shoulder of a young woman we knew to hurry her up. As the gunmen in their masks of women’s hosiery were exiting, one of them yelled “don’t follow or we’ll shoot!” I was a pre-teen and petrified – so petrified I was afraid to get out of the car when we got home. Sometime later I heard speculation that the gunmen had sat in Kay’s Ice Cream just across the from the White Store watching and plotting. I think of this every Thanksgiving Eve. Your story filled in some details for me.
Another really fun read! I miss your mom, too, and will follow her sage advice.