The Story of Plaguesgiving
Or how Covid brought one Midwestern block together for a High Holy Day of food, cocktails and f*ckery.
Shut the f*ck up! Shut up all you motherf**ers! I’m trying to do an interview. Pat’s telling me about how this block was ‘Drayton Place’ back in the day!
That’s me, sitting on my friend’s couch trying to play journalist in the middle of a party. Not just any party. Plaguesgiving.
Shana is in the kitchen making drinks for the Baby Neighbors, that’s Zack and Kristen, the young couple who are new(ish) to the block. Lovey is sitting next to me; The Consort is on the love seat near their nextdoor neighbor Pat, who brought her niece; and friend Andrea is in the recliner admiring the large, gay pride nutcracker figurine Shana bought her.
Everyone is drinking and talking, loudly, over each other. So loudly, in fact, that when I go back to listen to the interview recordings, my AI transcription service can’t figure out who is talking or even how many people are talking and has just thrown up its hands and said, essentially, f*ck you, you figure it out.
Fair.
Part of the joy of Plaguesgiving is chaos. The holiday is everything you want actual Thanksgiving to be – all the good food but none of the rules or stress or weird relatives bringing down the vibe or trying to get you to invest in crypto. I can’t promise Lincoln the #bougiebull won’t scoot his butt across the floor (he will) but you’re definitely going to be fat and happy.
So, let me tell you the tale of Plaguesgiving, or how the pandemic and a 24-25-26-27-pound turkey (it grows with every telling) brought together the neighbors of West Drayton in the town of Ferndale, Michigan, even as loneliness and social isolation spiked across the rest of the globe.
It’s gonna be a little bit of storytelling, a little bit of oral history, and a lot of swearing.
Enjoy!
If this were a movie, you’d now see the requisite zoom in from the heavens onto a two-story, gray-shingled Tudor-style house with white trim, a snow covered lawn, and a bright orange door.
It is February 2021 and a “little bit nippy” out, as Midwesterners would say. Translation: It’s definitely below freezing, snowy and butt-ass cold (as my Western cousins say). There is a small, blond woman with a 130-pound American Bulldog named Hank the Tank sitting in her lap as if he were a Pekingese. She is surrounded by people sitting on the cold concrete steps having a socially distanced cocktail party as if this were some Brooklyn stoop and not suburban Detroit. We are trying to keep six-feet apart, but it still feels like a miracle. People! We are with people!
I don’t know what it was like where you live, but that first Covid year in Detroit was scary and lonely. Friends and acquaintances had died. More than 1,500 in the city alone. It felt like relief, like breathing, to even be gathering like this.
The dog (who belongs to me and Lovey) eventually decides we are all stupid and goes inside. As a dog, he gets to do that; the rest of us are stuck out here with the wind biting our faces.
He joins The Consort, who is packing up to-go containers the bounty of Plaguesgiving: A mix of turkey and fixings cooked by Shana and The Consort and whatever the neighbors decide to contribute. This year there are mashed potatoes, gravy, roasted carrots, salad, Jell-0 shots, cookies (some with a little extra something), pie, and take-home drinks. And probably something else. There were a lot of drinks and it was cold.
The dog knows The Consort will likely give him his own serving of everything.
But first The Consort brings paper grocery bags stuffed with containers out to the porch and distributes them. Bags for Pat next door. Bags for Chad and Sarah across the street. Bags for Kristen and Zack, the neighbors to the left. A bag for Andrea and her new girlfriend, who is not yet officially her boo but whom we’re all pretty sure will be. Like Lovey and me, Andrea doesn’t live on the block, but we’ve been granted status as honorary denizens of West Drayton, aka Drayton Place. (An homage to the trashy, gossip-filled 1956 novel Peyton Place.) I’m pretty sure all it takes to get an invite is willingness to do stupid shit, ideally involving cocktails, possibly glitter, and fire.
We finish our drinks and linger, not wanting to leave the warmth of camaraderie and friendship. But eventually we take our bags and return to our own homes, where we will feast and celebrate together via the group chat.
It is perfect.
And now Plaguesgiving is officially a High Holy Day at Ferribantios Estates, the house of an avowed atheist and a Greek Orthodox. This February, we celebrated the fourth iteration together.
ME: Tell me the story of Plaguesgiving. How did it start? Was it a dark and stormy night?
THE CONSORT: Any day is dark and stormy when dealing with Shana.
ME: Oh!
SHANA: Wow, sleep lightly motherfucker.
That Plaguesgiving exists at all is thanks to that age-old question: What can I fit in my freezer?
It was March 2020, and the world seemed to be coming to an end. There were runs on toilet paper; grocery store shelves were empty; and Shana and The Consort were trying to figure out what level of Preppers they wanted to be. They wanted some level of safety but didn’t want to actually buy a whole second basement freezer to fit it all. (Even though, as I’m learning, Midwesterners love themselves a garage or basement freezer.)
The problem: A giant-ass turkey residing in their existing freezer, taking up at least a third of the space.
You see, the Consort works in construction and engineering, and as is typical in those fields, he was gifted a turkey for Thanksgiving 2019. (Seriously, my parents owned a construction company and often gave their employees holiday turkeys.) But they didn’t need a Thanksgiving turkey that year, so they stuffed it in the freezer and forgot about it. (Also, it arrived while they were in Egypt, which is just a weird side note to this whole story. You try dealing with a gift turkey while half-way around the world.)
But now, this damn turkey, which they were grateful for, was staring at them and taking up all the room they needed for emergency rations.
The solution, clearly, was to cook the bird, create a new holiday and alert the neighbors.
ME: Why is Plaugesgiving in February?
SHANA: Because why not? It's the doldrums of Michigan winter.
THE CONSORT: Exactly. It breaks up winter.
SHANA: Also, if you invent the holiday, it can happen whenever you want it to.
ME: Can we get it off from work now?
SHANA: Yes. It’s a part of our religion. It is one of the High Holy Days in the sovereign nation of Ferribantios Estates. The other High Holy Day is, of course, Prince-mas.
LOVEY: Are there rules about this holiday?
SHANA: You should drink.
LOVEY: If you don’t drink is it a problem?
SHANA: If you don’t drink it’s not a problem, we’re just gonna kick you out. Also, we strongly encourage you to, you know, come over unbathed in your sweatpants.
That first year, the neighbors were just Pat, plus Chad and Sarah across the street. Because Chad is from the UP (that’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), he probably shared some venison. Pat contributed a can of cranberry sauce because it’s what she had in her pantry. And a feast was served via bags of Tupperware dropped on porches.
Which, to me, seems like the most Midwest of things since, honestly, people are always bringing each other random mason jars and old Cool Whip containers filled with any manner of culinary experiment or hot dish.
KARL: Lincoln! Come!
KARL: Your dog is a problem. He’s going upstairs.
ME: Your dog is a problem. I'm doing an interview. Please handle your shit.
THE CONSORT: Opa!
SHANA: He's living his life. It’s fine. What’s he gonna do up there? There aren’t weapons. He’s fine.
But the neighbors weren’t yet those kinds of neighbors. Kristen hadn’t moved in yet with her dog, Paprika, ginger demon of West Drayton, or brought Zack into the picture. It was just a group of people who sometimes said hello on the street if they ran into each other bringing in the garbage cans.
By the second year, everyone was sitting outside on the stoop-porch, and Plaguesgiving had turned casual neighbors into friends. They were making sure each other’s sidewalks got shoveled, borrowing space in each other’s fridges as needed, and introducing everyone to each other.
Except for one house. Down the block. Nobody likes them. Oddly, it’s the house that the horror film Bird Box was written in. So that kind of tracks, even though the author doesn’t live there anymore.
Besides that, the block has that “Ferndale” vibe: Friendly and liberal.
Pat, who grew up in rural Michigan, moved to the block in 1981 and spent her career teaching elementary school in the city. When she arrived, she remembers it being a block filled with kids and block parties and adults running around in costumes. It was a party.
Maybe too much of a party? A torrid affair between two neighbors, both named “Robin” gave the block the nickname “Drayton Place.”
PAT: It was a cool vibe. Even back then we called it funky Ferndale. We had all these weird shops downtown.
But, eventually, the kids grew up and people moved away and the block got quiet. The camaraderie was gone. She didn’t really know her neighbors anymore. Except the ones right next door.
PAT: They were real creepy people. He would wear these little orange shorts in the summer and wash his car at the end of the driveway. And he had this long, blonde beard, and he would scream, “Fuck you” at the kids.
She rejoiced when they moved out and The Consort bought the place in 2008. He only occasionally grows a creepy porn-stache.
ME: Why did you buy on the block?
THE CONSORT: I was living with a buddy and it was time to move out. So I was looking for a place, something inexpensive, and I fell into this place. But it was in real rough shape.
SHANA: But he’s also never lived outside the ZIP Code.
ME: What? Really?
THE CONSORT: It’s the greatest city in the world.
ME: The world? You've been to a lot of places – the first turkey came while you were in Egypt!
THE CONSORT: It’s the center of everything.
SHANA: It’s very friendly.
THE CONSORT: It’s very friendly.
SHANA: It’s very liberal. It’s super gay.
THE CONSORT: It's liberal, but it also allows non-liberals to live here and do their thing without being chastised for the most part. Except by Shana.
Shana joined The Consort on the leafy block in 2014, and immediately got the “vibe” and fell in love with being able to walk everywhere: the liquor store, the mechanic, the bagel shop, the cookie shop, the grocery store, even Planned Parenthood. Which is exactly the opposite of the Metro Detroit community she had been living in.
SHANA: They hated me and I hated them right back. I felt so much more at home in Ferndale. I never felt like a regular at any place we went to, and here you very much are. Everybody – not in a Peyton Place, gossipy way – knows everybody.
But here, she invents new holidays and is the block captain. If you by block captain you mean you want a GenX Goth Chick with Black Nails, the Liquor Store on Text Chain, a Creepy-Awesome Bar Vulture and a Disco Ball in charge of your life. (I mean, I do!)
Kristen got her first dose of the vibe in early 2020 when she returned home to Michigan after five years in Seattle. She wanted something walkable and not conservative and close to downtown Detroit, so when her Realtor showed her the place on West Drayton, she was intrigued. She toured the house and was standing outside on the balcony when she looked over and saw … The Consort.
KRISTEN: Evans is just outside, just like, hey! And he’s got a brewery shirt on, and I was like okay, this guy’s gotta be ok. He’s gotta be cool.
SHANA: So, early on, one of the things we asked Kristen was, well, Evans has a very wide underpants radius.So we’re gonna need to know what you’re comfortable with because it’s gonna happen.
KRISTEN: At the bus stop in Seattle, I'd see homeless people just, like, shitting in a trash can. So, I mean, pants. It’s a good change.
That community proved critical as Kristen moved in during the late spring of 2020. She was new to the area, new back to Michigan, and alone. But next door, there were neighbors up for socially-distant fuckery who were ready to introduce her around. And act as a vetting service when she started bringing her new boyfriend, Zack, around.
At Plaguesgiving this year, they made the official announcement: They’re getting married.
It’s a pandemic love story.
ME: Door! There’s someone at your door.
PAT: Chad! It’s just Chad.
KRISTEN: Hi, Chad!
SHANA: The actual plague is standing outside our door!
Chad has just swung by to get his to-go bag, and he’s standing on the other side of the screen door with the face of a hound dog who wants to come in. But his wife, Sarah, has tested positive for Covid and out of an abundance of caution he’s skipping Plaguesgiving. But you can tell he wants to be a part of the conversation.
SHANA: Did I forget to tell you all that Amy was going to be interviewing you?
KRISTEN: I figured with the phone on your knee something was …
ME: I’m just taking notes.
KRISTEN: I like it.
PAT: I think it's a great conversation. It's because you've got different stages of life.
SHANA: Yeah, Amy asked us about the origin of Plaguesgiving and why we keep doing it. And I said, Well, because it's dumb and it's fun and, yeah, the plague’s still here.
It’s dumb and it’s fun and the plague’s still here. If that’s not a reason to do anything, I don’t know what is.
We did cave and buy a basement freezer.
GATECRASHING NEXT YEAR