Thankful on the Comstock

Sometimes history gives you a lesson without ever preaching a word.

All it takes is two entries in the same man’s journal, 11 years apart.

In November of 1885, Alf Doten is getting ready for Thanksgiving in Reno. He notes the weather, of course, because he always does. Then he writes about the ducks he has on hand, how he will take them into town for the holiday. He notices the little details most of us would skip. Turkeys for sale in the shops at two bits a pound. Cranberries. The bustle of people buying and planning. He makes his way to Reno with ducks and cider, and that day turns into what he later calls “Thanksgiving in Reno.”

If you were to step into that room, you would see a table loaded down with food. Roast turkey and duck, cranberry sauce, pie and cake, cups filled and refilled. After dinner somebody brings out a banjo and there is music and laughter. Family and friends shoulder to shoulder, full plates, full glasses, full hearts. Doten writes it all down in his quiet way, just one page among thousands, another day in a life that seems, at that moment, warm and secure.

Now skip the calendar forward to November of 1896.

Same date on the page. Same holiday. Same man.

The heading he gives that day is short and a little bitter: “Poor Thanksgiving.” The weather is cold and unsettled, light snow squalls, a wintry sky. This time there is no big family table, no ducks, no cider, no banjo. He writes that he has no turkey at all, only some cold roast pig at a free lunch table. That is his Thanksgiving. A few bites of leftover meat in a place where the food costs nothing because the people eating it have nothing to spare.

You can put those two entries side by side and feel the whole swing of a life. In 1885 he is the man bringing food to share, part of a crowd that can afford to feast. In 1896 he is the man grateful for a free plate of cold pork and a place to get out of the wind.

Same person. Same holiday. Two very different Thanksgivings.

That is how it goes, not just in the 19th century, but now. One year you are hosting, setting up extra chairs, worrying that the turkey might be a little dry and there might not be enough pie. Another year you are doing the mental math at the grocery store, quietly putting things back because the budget will not stretch. There are people who see Thanksgiving through a restaurant window, or from their car in a parking lot, or in a shelter line, while someone else posts photos of a table that could feed twenty.

Doten did not dress it up. He did not try to make a lesson out of it. He just wrote: big family dinner here, free lunch over there. Yet the lesson is still there waiting for us.

If your life today looks like that Reno Thanksgiving, with plenty of food and people around you, it is worth pausing before you carve the turkey or take that first bite. Be glad. Not in a smug way, but in a mindful way. You are in one of the “good years” on the calendar, and there is no guarantee that every year will look like this. You do not have to be afraid of the future to admit that things can change.

If this year looks more like that “Poor Thanksgiving,” do not let shame steal the day from you. One tough season does not tell your whole story, any more than one feast did for Doten. He had good years and bad years, big dinners and cold leftovers, and he kept going right to the last page of his journal. So will you.

Most of us stand somewhere in between. We have enough to eat, even if it is not fancy. We have some people, even if it is not a big crowd. For that alone, there is a lot to be thankful for.

So when you sit down this Thanksgiving, think of Alf Doten for a moment. Think of him at a long table in Reno, laughing with a full plate, and then later, hunched over a free lunch in a cold year, writing “Poor Thanksgiving” in his notebook. Let both days sit in your mind at the same time.

Be thankful for what you have. Remember that someone else is getting by on a thin plate this year. And know that fortune can turn, in either direction. That is all the more reason to be generous while you are able, and grateful whenever you can be.

If Nevada has a memory, a lot of it lives in his seventy-nine volumes. Two of those pages are just Thanksgiving days, one rich, one poor. Taken together, they are a reminder for the rest of us: nothing is guaranteed, kindness matters, and today is worth being thankful for, exactly as it is.

Diary 59, November 24, 1885
He writes about the ducks and his plan:

“Chester Hatch presented me with a pair of ducks today, fat & nice. Will take them to Reno for Thanksgiving.”

Diary 59, November 26, 1885
This is the Reno dinner scene:

“2 turkeys, cranberry sauce, pie, cake etc, 11 of us in all, after dinner I strung up old banjo.”

Diary 72-11, November 26, 1896
This is the lean Thanksgiving:

“Got no turkey, but only some cold roast pig at a free lunch table.”