Over the next several weeks, Millie found herself surprised and a little confused. She couldn't help it. She was worried about Janet. When Janet first came to mind, Millie first thought of words like "rude" and "stuck-up." But then she would recall the very frightened Janet and Millie's innate compassion made her wonder and worry. What if Janet's mom and Karl got arrested? What would happen to Janet? She tried to tell herself that Janet wasn't her problem but she couldn't help herself. She worried about Janet.
Suzy Marrett took over the smart aleck, show-off role. She had been angry that she was not one of the girls invited to stay overnight at Millie's. She decided to take it out on Marlene Hurst. Mrs. Whitby put a stop to that but Suzy pouted until after Christmas.
They had pheasant for Thanksgiving dinner. Pheasants loved sugar beet fields. There were a lot of them - both fields and pheasants - in Huron County. Sometimes in the winter the pheasants would bunch together in a circle to keep warm and there were so many that the edges of the circle would touch all four fences of a forty rod square field.
Millie's dad wasn't much of a hunter but he did take about a dozen pheasants every fall. They ate only one or two while they were fresh. The rest were dressed and put in the locker box. One of the grocery stores in Elkton had a whole freezer room full of freezer boxes. Millie's parents always rented three boxes so they had room for the beef and pork from the steers and hogs they butchered as well as the garden vegetables that her mom would put up. Millie's mom still did some canning. Millie had liked canned fruit better than frozen before the war because there was always sugar in it. There was sugar in canned fruit now but not as much. Millie and Freddy both liked green beans that were canned better than frozen. It was hard to tell why. Maybe they tasted better or maybe canned were just what they were used to.
Anyway, Thanksgiving dinner was great. Millie wondered what city people ate. With everything rationed, they probably didn't have as good a meal as farm folks. Millie didn't know whether to feel sorry for city people or to feel smug because most city people thought farmers were hicks. Those city people weren't as big as they thought they were.
Pheasant meat was good but it was kind of dry. The only real problem with it was you had to use a shotgun to kill pheasants and shotgun shells were full of shot, tiny round things smaller than a BB. At least that was the kind of shot that was used for pheasants. There was bigger shot available so you had to be sure to buy the right shells. If the shot was too big, you wouldn't have enough to eat when you hit the pheasant. Anyway, sometimes when you bit into a leg or a thigh, even a breast, you got some feathers and one of those tiny pieces of shot. Yuck!