Sharing the Holiday Bounty

On a 62-acre patch of grassy Dana Point oceanfront, Southern Californians are celebrating Thanksgiving as only they can.

Turkeys are smoked over a campfire and pies baked two at a time in an RV oven. What ingredients can’t be found in the mobile spice rack are available from the next tent.

“That’s how you meet people. You run over and say, ‘Can I borrow a can opener?’ ” says Teresa Carnt, 38, of Indio, surrounded by a dozen relatives barbecuing poultry and stirring dressing on a camp stove.

Every year, the late November holiday is sold out at Doheny State Beach, one of the most popular in California’s park system. Snowbirds arrive from the East Coast, as do year-round motor-homers. And generations of families return each Thanksgiving to set out their customary earth-tone plastic “linens” and melted-crayon candles.

Among them is Barbara Throckmorton of Brea. For 30 years, the Cal State Fullerton psychology professor has spent her holiday on the beach. With the November break from classes, she can camp the whole week in her 35-foot RV and cook in her kitchen on wheels. It is unfussy and homey, though stocked with a full-size fridge and pull-out wine closet.

“Oh, I do at least 10 pies,” the North Carolina native explains in her soft Southern accent, sealing her creations in giant food-storage bags. “I can only do a few at a time because you can only cook so much in an RV oven. I do some of the side dishes ahead. Then I get up really early that morning, cook some bacon and eggs, so it smells up the place real good. We pretty much eat whenever the turkey is done.”

It has been that way since 1968. The guest list changes but always includes Kenny Chambers, 77, beloved host at the Doheny visitor center and a year-round fixture.

“I’ve got it made,” says Chambers, who makes the rounds with campers from as far as Canada and as near as Dana Point. In the end, he usually scoots up his beach chair at Throckmorton’s table, where he says the pies are legendary: sweet potato, pumpkin coconut, North Carolina lemon chess and more.

“Wonderful people, wonderful campers,” Chambers says. He pats his full tummy. “My gosh, lady, you ought to see the food, the pies, the cakes, the turkey. Why do you think I can’t tie my own shoes afterward?”

Somehow the unorthodox, flip-flop-wearing crowd strung along the hazy shoreline Thursday captures the holiday’s spirit of thankfulness: for blessings, for health crises averted, for good times and good food--even if the stuffing is a bit sandy.

For Carol Gutierrez of Ontario, this is the 21st Thanksgiving spent on the sands of Doheny. Gutierrez, 50, a trainer of seeing-eye dogs, has staked out two campsites for 25 relatives ranging in age from 3 months to 76 years.

Matriarch Jean Weddle of Pomona is here with three playpens, three strollers and four generations. As she talks about the Thanksgiving tradition of sun and turkey and charcoal, her grandkids and children and even new friends she doesn’t know well set the table--a rubbery yellow cloth held down by a giant pumpkin centerpiece.

“I’m not the only matriarch here, though,” Weddle says, not wanting to hog the spotlight. “Mary Garmen is the other one. But she’s down on the beach sunbathing.”

Throckmorton, meanwhile, is hostess to six guests who dine on a flowery vinyl tablecloth strapped to a weathered seaside picnic table--one of only 33 in the park. To one side is the lagoon flocked with shore birds, straight ahead are sailboats against the bright horizon, and to the other side is the rocky south point of the once-legendary surf spot.

It took Throckmorton hours of speed dialing exactly seven months ago to get this spot. Veterans of the holiday camp-out know the drill: Call the toll-free reservations service used by most of the state’s 268 parks, and hope you get in. Doheny is in demand year-round, but park rangers say other campgrounds, like San Clemente State Beach’s, were also full on Thanksgiving.

Throckmorton, 50-something, steered her lumbering camper south on Tuesday morning and spent the rest of the day baking. She finished her renowned pies by the end of that day.

Her Thursday began when she put the bird on the smoker at 4:30 a.m. and crawled back into her queen-size RV bed for another couple of hours of shut-eye.

By noon, she had boiled the heck out of her Southern green beans with salt pork and finished her stuffing and cream potatoes, all of which she spread across a fold-up table. Only the candied yams were not perfectly browned; her RV oven had gone on the fritz.

Until Thanksgiving afternoon arrives, Throckmorton never knows how many diners she will have. There are usually some stragglers: students orphaned for the holiday, drop-ins from other campsites.

As her daughter, Brandy, sets the table and her grandsons, ages 9 and 15, toss a football with other kids on the beach, Throckmorton says she would celebrate the holiday no other way.

“Think about it,” Throckmorton says, adjusting her visor with a smile. “You always have enough room, the kids love to come to the beach, I never worry about my grandkids tearing up my house.”