Thanksgiving featured a lot more than turkey and stuffing a century ago. Dances, boxing matches, hypnotism shows and moving pictures were among the entertainments that got people out of their houses for much of the day in Bangor. But first, a few words about turkeys: If you were looking for one, best not go to the Pickering Square farmers market.

This had not been a good turkey year for local farmers, who mainly had chicken and “fowl” – probably geese and ducks – to offer. Most “native turkeys” actually hearkened from Vermont or New Brunswick, the Bangor Daily Commercial confided to its readers. Most Maine turkeys came from Aroostook County where the royal bird was taking a back seat to potatoes these days.

Perhaps it was best to buy at a store. Lynch’s Market on Park Street in East Market Square promised “no embalmed turkeys” – only the genuine native kind, which newspaper readers had already learned probably came from Vermont or New Brunswick. Then, one could pick up a genuine plum pudding at the New York Cooking School at 146 Main St. and a few other fixings and have a meal fit for one of Bangor’s fancy hotels.

Why not just go out to dinner at one of those hotels? The Windsor was serving Roast Stuffed Vermont Turkey and more than a dozen other items including Green Turtle Soup, Roast Green Goose and Green Apple Pie.

The Bangor House’s offerings included Potatoes a la Nontais (doubtlessly from Aroostook County), lobster patties and a Saddle of Venison. Diners at the Penobscot Exchange feasted on Blue Points on the Half Shell, Minniehaha Cake and much more.

Of course, there were many poor people who needed help, and Bangor gave generously, said the Commercial on Nov. 29, listing donated items for the Bangor Children’s Home, the King’s Daughter’s Home, the Home for Aged Women and the Good Samaritan Home. Meanwhile, a large number of homeless people, known simply as “shelters,” were taken in at the city jail. The police reporter did not describe their meal, only that they “thought themselves lucky even to have a bed on Thanksgiving.”

After dinner, opportunities for entertainment were legion. Three dances were scheduled – two dance matinees at Bangor and Brewer city halls and an evening affair at Society Hall featuring Pullen’s Orchestra. The city’s dance scene had opened earlier in the month with the first major dance, the Letter Carriers’ Concert and Ball, followed by the concert and ball given by the Firemen’s Relief Association on Thanksgiving Eve. The latest dance craze – the Bucking Heifer or Barn Dance as it was also called – had already ignited a debate in the newspapers: Was it new or a revival of “the old Military schottische” from 20 years ago.

The curmudgeon sent to review the Letter Carriers’ ball for the Commercial reported back on Nov. 19 that the women were wearing “the most peculiar headgear. … Many of them looked like inverted half-pint dippers with feathers for handles.” The young men, meanwhile, were engaged in an “absolutely idiotic fad” causing them to “run around with their trousers rolled halfway between their ankles and their knees.” Doubtlessly these fashions lasted at least until Thanksgiving.

Sports fans had choices between football and boxing. The Shamrocks defeated the Emeralds at Maplewood Park. Not surprisingly, most of the players on these local teams had Irish surnames.

The game was played in a sea of mud. Nevertheless, onlookers crowded onto the field to get a closer look until Inspector Calvin Knaide arrived. “He kept the field clear and if anyone ventured into forbidden territory he got his,” commented the Bangor Daily News. “If Cal’s orders weren’t instantly obeyed, it was because the trespasser was stuck in the mud.”

That evening, Belfield Walcott, “the sturdy colored boxer,” and Kid Egan, “formerly champion of the American Navy,” slugged it out at the Arena, the Queen City’s new boxing spot on Franklin Street. It was the best bout seen in Bangor in a long time even though Egan was “inclined to loaf at times.”

The crowd was small, Bangoreans possibly preferring something a little lighter on top of their heavy dinners. Prescelle, the hypnotist, and his assistant, Edna May Magoon, drew a large crowd at the Opera House, as did the three films showing at Bangor’s new movie house on Central Street, The Nickel. They were “The Wonderful Lantern,” “A Gold Brick” and “Ice Industry in Sweden.”

Bangoreans had time for intellectual past times as well on Thanksgiving. Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, superintendent of the International Reform Bureau, spoke Thanksgiving evening at the Universalist Church on “Our Boys and Girls.” He had just returned from a 14-month tour of four continents where he had been “conducting a crusade against rum and opium as the supreme curses of the colored races,” said the Commercial the day before Thanksgiving.

In the same issue of the newspaper was an advertisement for mail-order liquor, $3 for four quarts of Parkwood Club unmixed whiskey, plus a free bottle of wine from R.A. Splaine & Co. of Haverhill, Mass. It was all perfectly legal despite Maine’s much-maligned prohibition law.

The Commercial’s police reporter commented the day after Thanksgiving that only two cases of intoxication came before Bangor’s municipal court, an unusually low number “after the great Yankee holiday.” Bangor arrested more people for drunkenness than all other crimes combined, The city had set a record the year before. Whether Dr. Crafts mentioned any of this in his talk is unknown.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net