Happy Thanksgiving From Roosevelt Island, Tradition, Family, Food, Football, Local History And Alice's Restaurant - Roosevelt Island Pilgrims First Thanksgiving Too

Happy Thanksgiving Day wishes to everyone out there in Roosevelt Island land and elsewhere. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!! 

Since Thanksgiving is a day all about about Tradition, here is my traditional Thanksgiving Day post started in 2007:

In addition to family, great food, the Macy's Parade, Miracle on 34th Street, March of the Wooden Soldiers and football, listening to Arlo Guthrie's rendition of Alice's Restaurant on WNEW-FM was, for me, a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition.

A former station DJ remembers Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie this way on the blog All Mixed Up Radio.

Every year a couple of days before Thanksgiving, it starts. It's slow at first, and then turns into a non-stop avalanche of phone calls. And no matter how many times a station runs promo announcements telling people exactly when it will be played, the calls still come.

"What time are you playing 'Alice's Restaurant?'"...

Yes, in the olden days people used to listen to music on the radio. Imagine that!...

Here's how Alice's Restaurant became a Thanksgiving tradition:

 

 and the full song with scenes from the movie.

Roosevelt Island Historical Society President Judy Berdy shares a Thanksgiving story from Roosevelt Island's past when it was known as Welfare Island and housed a penitentiary. 

Also, former blogger Roosevelt Island 360 tells us about the first Roosevelt Island Thanksgiving in 1975 as reported by the NY Times.

According to the 1975 NY Times article:

One of the nation's newest settlements, a small community of pioneers, is about to celebrate its first Thanksgiving Day on its rockbound island home in the East River.

The situation on Roosevelt Island, which separates midtown Manhattan from Queens, is not quite the same as the one that faced the first New England homeowners centuries ago. The 170 rent‐paying families, the first in the ambitious planned development being built on the island, have not been undergoing hardships. Maybe inconveniences here and there, but not questions of life and death.

Heat comes up (with or without banging the radiator to alert the super, New Yorkstyle). There is light and shelter and the natives are rather nonexistent.

Last night, the new islanders fed one another at an ethnic buffet representing the many diverse strains of humanity they stem from. Tonight there will be an ecumenical service at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, the church built in 1889 and now put to work as a community center. Tomorrow will be a family day, when people may talk turkey around their tables.

Click here for the full NY Times article on the Roosevelt Island Pilgrims first Thanksgiving.

Here are some scenes from today's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

 

Also: Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloons from the past. 

See how the Macy's #ThanksgivingDayParade has evolved over the past century! https://t.co/Lm19u2EK22

— Untapped New York (@UntappedNY) November 23, 2023

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!!