Thanksgiving in Yukon, at Morley Bay, gave Tim’s best story its punchline. All of Tim’s stories conveyed feelings and meaning wrapped in humor, and the funniest and most meaningful ones we couldn’t hear too many times. His thanksgiving at Morley Bay gave him the best punchline he ever used.
The story didn’t begin in Yukon in 1942. It began in Magnolia Maryland in 1935.
Still in high school, Tim played shortstop for an amateur baseball team, and in 1935 he and his team dominated a ‘white’s only’ league in southern Maryland; ended the season undefeated. But southern Maryland also had a ‘blacks only’ league, and it had another undefeated team.
The situation demanded a playoff.
Desperate to play in that game, Tim knew that his father, Pop, descended from Confederate Army veterans and racist to his core, would never allow it. Young Tim turned to a teenager’s solution.
What Pop didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
The middle innings on the appointed Saturday afternoon found the two teams deadlocked. In position in the field, on his toes, waiting for the next pitch, Tim paid no attention to the noisy crowd—until it suddenly hushed. Looking up, he watched in horror as a familiar figure strode onto the field. The game stopped. Pop marched grimly through the hush to the third base line, took his horrified and humiliated son by the left ear and marched him off the field.
Years passed and in November of 1942 First Lieutenant Tim Timberlake, a white officer in the all black 93rd Engineering Regiment, ran the regimental motor pool at Morley Bay. The 93rd had just stood down from its epic labor on the Alcan Highway.
Regimental supply came up with turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner; hauled them to Morley Bay over the ice. And, after eight months of Vienna sausage, Spam and Chili, the men in Tim’s motor pool enjoyed a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner. When someone photographed the soldiers at table, Lt. Timberlake’s white face, to say the least, stood out in a sea of black faces.
A week or so later, back in Maryland, Pop Timberlake received a letter from his son. The envelope held nothing but one of those photos and, on the back, Tim had printed a note.
“Dear Pop, Let’s see you get me out of this one.”
