Thanksgiving is a time for family gatherings. But sometimes when you gather that family in one room with sharp knives and random conversation, things can get out of control. Face it, everyone has a Thanksgiving horror story in one way or another. Mine involves guns and blackberry brandy.

Let me elaborate on that a little. So it was fall of 2003 and I had recently turned of legal drinking age. As a family tradition on Thanksgiving, we usually spend it chasing after elk. What better than hunting for your dinner, right? Well, our family and our hunting partners all piled into 2 pickups and ventured to the woods. After the morning hunt was over, all the women decided to pack up and head back to the cabin to begin prepping the holiday dinner. The guys decided to stay out and continue the hunt. The only problem was all the women drove off in the truck that had the cooler full of adult beverages.

About an hour after the ladies left, all of us guys remaining on the mountain became “thirsty.” When hunting is slow and killing animals isn’t going well, we resort to killing braincells. When we got out and looked in the cooler all we found was 4 Icehouse beers and a full bottle of blackberry brandy. “Uh oh!” I thought. “this isn’t going to end up well.”

All we wanted was to quench our thirst with a couple ice cold beers and slowly make our way back to the cabin for dinner. After 10 minutes the beer was gone and we were still thirsty. So out came the blackberry brandy.

Fast forward a couple hours and we are picking each other up out of snowbanks and singing mumbled bar room songs. The sober driver decided to haul us back a little earlier than planned. When we arrived back at the cabin, I was seeing 3 of everything. Everyone stumbled into the cabin except for me. I felt that crawling under the truck for a nap was the best place for me. A few minutes later, people came out looking for me, but never thought to look under the truck. I eventually woke up and felt I would take a casual stroll (in a serpentine pattern)  to our guest cabin on the other side of the creek. By this time, dinner had already been served. I was still M.I.A. and a search party came looking for me.

My Dad, who was in about as bad a shape as me, eventually found me face first on the floor in the guest cabin. He woke me with a boot to the ribs, saying “Get Up! You got me in trouble with Mom!” Like an injured soldier, my Dad carried me on his shoulders back to the cabin for dinner.

When I got into the dining room, everyone was looking at me like I was hit by a truck. I was handed a cold plate of food and, after being sat down to eat it, immediately fell asleep face first in my mashed potatoes.

That was the year I made my mother cry on Thanksgiving. *SIGH*

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for listening to my show!

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