Thanksgiving Dinner

Students, their families and teachers in Radnor Township, to bring the city and suburbs closer together, will hold a Thanksgiving Day dinner tonight for more than 50 refugees living in West Philadelphia. The holiday dinner will be held in the high school cafeteria for people from Angola, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Hungary and Vietnam. The school district will provide a bus to transport the refugees. "This will be the first Thanksgiving for some of the refugees," said Lois Wysocki, a teacher and an organizer of the dinner.

The first American Thanksgiving ended up starting more than one national tradition. There came to be, of course, the annual Thanksgiving feast and holiday. But it also could be credited with starting our tradition of "potluck" and "bring-a-dish" dinners. When the English settlers (mostly Pilgrims) invited the Wampanoag Indian chief and his "family" to join in celebrating the newcomers' first harvest of largely foreign foods on foreign soil they had crossed an ocean to possess, they hadn't factored in the American Indian philosophy that all men are brothers.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, especially when I can cook for family and friends. Maybe you feel the same way but have been so busy this fall that you still think it's October. Or maybe you just don't want to deal with all those leftovers, turkey sandwiches and turkey soup. Then this meal is for you: Thanksgiving dinner for four in 15 minutes. No prepping ahead of time. No leftovers. No frantic calls to the Meat and Poultry Hotline. ("Is my turkey still good if it's been frozen since the Reagan administration?"

THANKSGIVING DAY, you and your family will gather 'round for extreme feasting on roast turkey, gravy, stuffing and the rest. Your belly will be filled to bursting - but your wallet may be dangerously thin. Thanksgiving dinner will set you back $50 to $100 and up for a 10-person meal. That price has steadily increased in the past decade, jumping as much as 11 percent just last year, according to published reports. As this holiday season approaches, Americans' finances are already in turmoil from dipping housing values, an uncertain stock market and a shaky job market.

Sixteen tables were set up. On the food line, the aroma of turkey, stuffing and the trimmings steamed up from the trays. Servers waited, ladles at parade rest. Nearby, a table groaned under several tiers of pie and cake. Clearly, all was ready for this dinner for the needy. Only one problem. Not too many showed up. Members of the Foster Military Lodge in Willingboro hoped that up to 150 would partake yesterday of their first Thanksgiving meal for the down and out, but after the allotted two hours, there still was a lot of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, string beans, rolls and cranberry sauce left.

When Gary Schindler says he and wife Marci will prepare a ton of turkey for Thanksgiving, he is being modest. Actually, they expect to roast well over 2,000 pounds. The Schindlers, proprietors of Main Line Turkey on Station Avenue in Ardmore, will fire up the ovens at midnight before the holiday to begin cooking. He and other caterers have discovered a booming trade selling Thanksgiving meals to customers who want the feast at home, but not the slicing, dicing and basting that precedes the tasting.

A few years ago, Herb Balian bought 320 place settings of china for the West Chester Community Center. The purchase meant that when his "family" arrived for Thanksgiving dinner, he was ready. Balian's family, at least on Thanksgiving, can consist of as many as 250 people. They are not just those who are needy, but also those who are lonely with nowhere else to go, he said. "I always wanted to do something like this," said Balian, who has been organizing Thanksgiving day dinners, with a cadre of volunteers, for 11 years in West Chester.

When Peter Hedges decided to write a script about how a rebellious black-sheep daughter would make amends to her intransigent white-bread mother, he imagined her making a special dinner for her mom. Recalling his own childhood, he thought of Thanksgiving, the special meal in his family. Then the realization hit: He hadn't the faintest idea how to cook, let alone make a complex Thanksgiving feast. So it was that, just as April does in Hedges' new film, Pieces of April, the first-time director phoned home and asked his father how he had made the family's Thanksgiving dinners.

BOXES OF FIXINGS for Thanksgiving dinner await distribution at the Civic Center. Kim Martin, of the Philadelphia Youth Service Corp., was adding fliers from the Mayor's Office of Community Services to each donated meal yesterday.

WHEN HE SAID he'd experienced "a little bit of an uh-oh feeling," Eric Medes probably was grossly understating the case. After all, St. Joseph's Prep had blown leads - two even "comfortable" - in its previous three Thanksgiving meetings with Malvern Prep and had been smoked by Roman Catholic, 45-17, in a Catholic AAAA semifinal back on Nov. 5 after building a 17-7 pad. So, what happened yesterday at Plymouth-Whitemarsh High, after Malvern...

Q: I am a 45-year-old woman. I recently went back to school to start a new career. One of my professors is a wonderful young man. I usually show up in his class a half-hour early to study. He is usually there at that time and we have had many personal conversations. I am anxious about my grades. I told him that and he started emailing me my grades within three hours of taking the test. He never sends anything personal. My husband seems to think this man has a crush on me. What I feel for this man is maternal, not romantic.

In her 30 years answering the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, Jan Allen has heard some doozies. Can I cook the turkey in my clothes dryer? How do I make gravy from turkey droppings ? "One Colorado woman ran out of space in her refrigerator, so she stuck the turkey outside in a snowdrift," Allen says. "Then it snowed so much overnight that on Thanksgiving morning she couldn't find her turkey. "And she wanted me to tell her how to find it. " More than 50 home economists and dietitians answer calls at Butterball's Chicago-area office during prime turkey time, Nov. 1 through Christmas.

THERE ARE families, I've heard, who frown upon discussions of religion and politics over dinner. What do these people argue about at Thanksgiving? Turkey brine recipes? Stuffing - inside the turkey or out? The merits of white meat, dark meat or Tofurky? I can't say this has ever been a problem in my family - stick the cops next to the lawyers and let the games begin - but if you're stuck for conversation tomorrow in whatever gap between "The National Dog Show" (noon, NBC10)

For decades, Thanksgiving morning in South Jersey has meant the smell of a turkey in the oven and the sights and sounds of high school football. But the second half of that tradition is starting to give way. More and more schools are scheduling games on Thanksgiving eve in hopes of increasing attendance and freeing up the holiday for family-related events. "People are so busy and do so much traveling to get to Thanksgiving dinner," said Kingsway athletic director Joe Galliera, whose school will host rival Clearview on Wednesday at 6 p.m. "This creates more of an opportunity for people to have more time to spend with their families.

I'm helping Daughter Francesca move, but we're going nowhere. Why? Because we fight. The trouble is the difference in our approach. To everything. And, of course, we're adamant. We get that from Mother Mary. When in doubt, blame it on your mother. Unless your mother is me. We begin with a basic difference to moving, in general. My approach is that everything in one apartment has to be put in boxes to be carted to another apartment, there to be unpacked.

This is another in our "Make it Happen" series about people who see a need and find a way to meet it. If you know people who get things done in their communities, tell me about them so I can share their stories with our readers. NOE'L ROBERTS had seen enough. She couldn't stop the abuse her mother was suffering. She wasn't going to be a silent witness any longer. "My stepfather was abusive to my mother," Roberts recalled. "But she wouldn't leave him. "So I left home early and got married.

Stephen Starr is talking about a May 13 debut for Frankford Hall , his beer garden at 1208 Frankford Ave. in Fishtown. This will be a casual spot set up in a former commercial building whose interior brick walls were simply punched out to make doorways. A courtyard will provide the outdoor seating; it's separated from the indoor seating by large garage doors. The simple menu will feature walk-up counters and young women selling food and beer tickets.   What's new Lorival Felix has set up Massa Pizza & Grill , a contemporary Italian-Portuguese BYO at 131 E. Butler Ave. in downtown Ambler (215-641-0900)

Even though she had been up late preparing Thanksgiving dinner, Celia Ingram sprang out of bed when the phone rang and her husband answered about 5 a.m. Thursday. "I didn't hear the whole conversation, but as soon as I heard my husband say, 'Was he hurt?' I started getting dressed right away," Ingram said. "I also started packing a duffel bag because I knew I'd be spending time at the hospital because I wasn't going to leave. " But when Ingram and her husband arrived at Hahnemann University Hospital, they were ushered into a private consultation room, she said.