This story is not a story about Grandpa Lucke although he is in it quite a bit. It is a story about us Lucke kids at Thanksgiving. But it needs a beginning and maybe Grandpa Lucke is that.
I have been going to write a book about Grandpa Lucke for several years. It will be just a book for the family and not a long book at all. I have not gotten started on that book.
Grandpa Lucke was a genial German who changed his name from Lueche to Lucke when he opened up a shoe store in Havre in 1903. He figured that no one would buy shoes from someone whose name was pronounced Leekie. So it became Lucke and Lou Lucke became a hard drinking merchant prince. He retired from the Lou Lucke Company in 1925 and fished and hunted until his death in 1940. He married Harriett Thackeray and they had five children. My father Louis Jr, was in the middle. I think Grandpa and Grandma Lucke had a terrible marriage. On at least one occasion Grandma Lucke bought a new car, took the children and spent most of a year in California until finally he came and got her and made promises that he did not keep. When he died in 1940 Grandma Lucke went out and purchased a four door Oldsmobile convertible bright red in color and with white leather seats. I remember that car although I remember nothing of Grandpa Lucke, being born in 1841. Matter of fact the only one of us grandchildren that did know Grandpa Lucke was Al’s son Louis. He was ten when Grandpa Lucke died.
But we could feel his presence in the house on Third Avenue that held his body for a two day wake after he died. Lots of his things were still in the house.
And the Lou Lucke Company was flourishing with big plans to go a different direction after World War II.
It was kind of an embarrassing family secret that Grandpa Lucke invented a sleeping bag that would hold a family. He had his shoe makers sew two down comforters together, line it with green canvas and he had a huge sleeping bag. We all had them. They were wonderful. The new idea for the store was that there were more and more people fishing and hunting in Montana and no sporting goods stores at all. So when the war was over, the Lou Lucke Company would travel all over Montana selling sporting goods to people wanting to start stores. Don’t forget the line of sleeping bags that was growing too. Grandpa Lucke thought that after World War II sleeping bags would have been perfected by the troops and would be just great to sell. He was right.
So, as we grandchildren grew, we knew the family legends but only Grandma Lucke, who, quite frankly, seemed to feel relief at her new station in life.
Al’s Louis went far away to school but younger sister Janet was here and was just about my age. Scott had Scotty and Butch and we were the kids who had to do the work that no one else wanted to do at the store. My dad always said, thank heavens the boiler at the store had been converted to gas instead of coal or I would be trudging downtown to the store to fill the hopper with coal on cold winter nights! I knew mother would never stand for that so I never worried that could happen.
But, folding boxes, that was a different thing. It seemed that almost half of the Lou Lucke Company business came between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most all gifts had to be gift wrapped and were put in white boxes before wrapping. There were pajama boxes, sox boxes, shirt boxes, suit boxes, tie boxes, and even boxes for unmentionables. It was too slow to fold those boxes when wrapping for Christmas so we kids would come down after school and on Saturdays and fold boxes for a good month or two. We had boxes to the ceiling of several basement rooms. That led to box wars which got us in trouble but by the time the push for Christmas presents was on, we had stepped forward and folded thousands of boxes.
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving the Lucke men and employees would come down to the store after work and put hundreds of live evergreens on ledges and on partial walls and all over the store so when coming in the store smelled like a wonderful forest. That was Grandpa Lucke’s idea too. As I got older I wondered how we didn’t burn the place down because by the time those trees came out after Christmas, they were tinder dry. Anyway, when the doors opened on the Monday after Thanksgiving, forest land was on display along with a large collection of stuffed animals looking out of the forest. The Lou Lucke Company was designed so that most all the merchandise was under glass. It took a salesman to show you a new shirt for instance. Not at Christmas., Each counter had large calcimined and mica sprayed back drops and huge piles of Pendleton shirts, Van Heusen shirts, and everything from belt buckles to sox to pajamas to Hart Schaffner and Marx suits were up for grabs and grabbed they were. The store was full of customers during that period from Thanksgiving to Christmas and we even opened on two or three evenings each week. It was big business for the Lou Lucke Company.
Thanksgiving Day was the only real respite before the storm but even that was no real respite because Grandma Lucke was there to make sure that the day and the dinner were perfect.
As I grew older and read Havre history, I read about all these people who threw grand parties and visited each other and were really the society of Havre. Yet, seldom and dare I say never were the Lou Lucke’s mentioned. It was like they and their five children in their big house, were a fortress with doors that locked from the inside and seldom did people get in. Grandpa Lucke had his half city block garden in back of the house and his Chesapeake dogs to raise and his beloved Clear Creek. Grandma Lucke had the Thackeray’s families to visit and that was enough for them.
All that changed at thanksgiving. After I got to be about eight, I was the chief arranger of the Thanksgiving table and chairs and the chief taster of the stuffing for the big bird. Mother would tell me that Grandma Lucke had called and I was to go to her house ASAP. Away I would go. When I got there the only question was how many had Grandma Lucke invited for Thanksgiving Dinner. If it was sixteen people or less, the table could stay in the dining room. It it was more than sixteen, the table had to be moved so it could end up with about half of it out in the living room. That was when the old table held twenty to twenty-two people. Now where those people came from I never knew. I guess they were old friends but I never saw them around the house or the store until Thanksgiving. There were always enough chairs and the table had leaves that would not quit coming out of the closet next to the dining room.
With the table arranged it became time to taste the stuffing which was always perfect and never needed changing. That was not good enough for Grandma Lucke who demanded there was something wrong with the stuffing. So, I got to saying it needed more sage, knowing that plenty of tame sage went into the stuffing. By the way, it was stuffing if it went in the big bird and dressing if it did not. Grandma Lucke always had both on her table. Having added more sage to the stuffing, Grandma Lucke let me go home.
The next day was Thanksgiving. Everyone had a duty at Grandma Lucke’s house. The men sat in the living room and watched football on her new TV set. The women all headed for the kitchen to help Grandma Lucke cook the potatoes and get the meal on the table. There were at least fourteen pies to get on the built in sideboard in the dining room. Those pies must be on show during the meal.
We kids headed with our balloons to a second floor bedroom in the house. We would fill our water balloons with water and go out on Grandma Lucke’s roof and throw water balloons at people walking by on the sidewalk. If one dared to come complain at the door about us. We were long gone to the garage to hide out until the coast was clear again.
Since Al was always the oldest he would carve the turkey. That was when the Lucke kids were always nearby. We were supposed to love the skin of the turkey as he cut it off the really big 24 pound bird. And we did. By the Time we ate warm white meat and skin coming off the turkey I don’t know how we had any appetite for anything else. I would look at Grandma Lucke (tiny thing she was) and think she was glad it was all finally happening so life could get back to normal after this feast.
After dinner and the table got cleared and put back in the dining room where it belonged, the leaves put back in the closet and the extra chairs spread out in five bedrooms around the house, it was back to football for the men. I remember one old geezer who didn’t get the concept of “instant replay”. He could not figure out why when each offense ran each play twice, the other team didn’t catch on to that strategy.
We kids would get on our coats and head usually to the Havre Theatre where there would be a special movie shown at Thanksgiving. Usually it featured John Wayne but was not a western. Maybe a safari show, or a circus show, or something else; grand in a very wide screen experience and far different than our Friday night movie experiences at the Lyric where for fourteen cents we would get a cartoon, a serial, and usually Bud Abbott and Lou Costello doing something strange and funny. And sometimes that fourteen cents got us into a double feature! Goodness.
We sat down in the lavish Havre Theater and with popcorn and coke in hand watched things from far away take our breath away. Until it was over and we walked home in the darkening sky. When we got to Grandma Lucke’s house, there would be our parents waiting and home we would go.
The Christmas season was upon us. It was my favorite season and I was very excited!
It is still my very favorite season all these years later and I am still very excited!
