Hudson Fish & Game feeds 1,000
By DEAN SHALHOUP
Staff Writer

Karen Knox freely admits that her children and grandchildren have no idea what it's like to sit down with family and enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

"They have no clue," Knox said this week, her voice hoarse and her sighs deep with the signs of overwork that befall the longtime Hudson resident every year around this time.

But her offspring are by no means deprived. Rather, they consider themselves blessed, because to them, trading a "normal" Thanksgiving family dinner for the opportunity to help make sure more than 1,000 local people don't miss out on theirs has always been a no-brainer.

On Wednesday and Thursday, for the 29th year, the Knox family joined a gregarious legion of men, women and children at the Hudson Fish and Game Club and staged what's officially known as the Gil Knox Annual Thanksgiving Dinner, but which is really a one-of-a-kind adventure in culinary immersion and civic pride named in honor of the man who planted its first seeds more than three decades ago.

And while many volunteers arrived and took their stations at first light Thursday morning, a good number had already been there for hours, gulping coffee while basting bird after bird after bird, blending pan after pan of stuffing, mashing bushel after bushel of potatoes and keeping an eye on an ocean of simmering gravy, all of which would soon end up on the plates of grateful recipients.

"It literally has a soul of its own," said Tammy Curran, Knox's daughter, as she watched the steady parade of volunteers coming through the door and awaiting their assignments early Thursday morning.

"He's been coming for years ... 20, I think ... she was a Girl Scout when she started ... this guy, been here 10 years and I can't even remember his name," Curran said with a laugh as Sean Corriveau reminded her, letting her off the hook.

"First came here when I was 14," said Corriveau, now in his mid-20s. So impressed, and fulfilled, by his annual visits was Corriveau that six years ago, he started bowing out of his own family gathering - with their blessing - to sit down and spend the holiday with his extended Fish and Game Club family.

Suddenly, Corriveau heard Curran call his name. "Tammy just yells at me, and I do whatever she needs done," he said with a laugh.

As volunteers began ramping up for the launch of the grand spectacle itself - the "organized chaos" that is the bagging, packaging and loading for delivery process - a group of men in what's usually the club's small bar and lounge area drained gigantic pots of potatoes in preparation for the mass-mashing marathon.

"Good ol' Yankee ingenuity," longtime volunteer Tommy Gilbert quipped, picking up a power drill with a most unusual bit - a commercial grade, bulb-shaped mixer the size of a football affixed to a long stainless-steel rod.

Indeed, you'd need the arms of 100 champion powerlifters - maybe more - to mash this many potatoes and mix this much stuffing manually. Gilbert estimates his kitchen team prepared upwards of 500 pounds of spuds and at least that much stuffing by the time all was said and done.

As much as he likes turkey and its fixings, Gilbert said, one sight he doesn't want to see when he gets home from his annual 36-hour marathon at the club is turkey and stuffing. The solution? "I make myself a meatloaf out of it," he said of the turkey and fixings. "It's great. Doesn't look a bit like turkey."

Other than being surrounded by enough traditional Thanksgiving fare to assemble somewhere north of 1,200 meals - just over 1,000 delivered and the remainder served right at the club - the common thread for every Gil Knox Annual Thanksgiving Dinner organizer or volunteer past, present or future is the comraderie, but especially, the gratification of knowing that so many friends and neighbors you'll probably never meet are able to have at least one, hot, full-course holiday meal, or perhaps feel a little less lonely knowing there are people out there who care enough to remember them on Thanksgiving.