In 1898, the Minneapolis Journal launched a Saturday section for young readers. For the next 15 years, the Journal Junior featured writing and artwork sent in by schoolchildren from Minnesota and surrounding states. The topic for late November 1903 was, of course, Thanksgiving. Top honors went to Helen Margolis and Margaret Harrison of Minneapolis. Helen wrote about an irresistible pudding in her kitchen; Margaret wrote about a live turkey let loose in her living room. Mildly amusing but not worth recounting here. John Knapp, a sixth-grader at Longfellow School, on the other hand, earned an honorable mention for this somewhat disturbing Thanksgiving memory.
 

A REALLY TRUE TALE.

 
It was a very cold day a week before Thanksgiving. My father and mother had gone to town and my brother and I were left alone. The night before this we had heard a big flock of geese flying over our house and when we looked out the air above seemed just full of them.  My father took his shotgun and killed about ten or eleven in two shots. The next morning when my father and mother had gone we heard geese screaming down by the pond, so we took the shotgun and went out. We found the pond covered with ice, and all over the ice were the geese. I took the gun and fired both barrels at them. We were surprised not to see them all fly, but they just screamed all the more. We ran to pick up the first dead one but could not, for its legs were frozen in the ice. My brother ran home for the ax and we chopped out about forty and killed them. We had goose for Thanksgiving and plenty of it. We sold the rest and got about fifteen dollars for them, so we were all very thankful.
 
 
 
An unrelated and uncredited cartoon anchored the front page of the section that week:
Journal Junior cartoon, Nov. 21, 1903

 

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