Many many years ago my "four great" grandmother began cooking goose on September 27th in honor of St. Michael's Day. She had a goose that was twenty-one years old and had the name Mother Goose. My aunt said that the goose was the Mother Goose of Goose Day. I don't know when or how St. Michael's Day became Goose Day, but I do know that it was believed that if you ate goose on Goose Day, you would be wealthy all year.

The tradition of Goose Day was handed down from generation to generation and was never broken until the year that my grandfather fell from a tree in the yard. That year was 1991. I can remember some of the trouble that my grandfather would go through to get a goose for Goose Day. He always believed that he had to have a goose and went to any lengths to get one. He would go "Goose Hunting" as we all called it. He would leave sometimes at 9:00 in the morning and not get back until late that evening for a goose. One year he paid $25.00 for a goose. My grandmother called him a crazy person for doing that.

The last goose we got was the goose that was never eaten. My grandfather had gotten the goose in late July of that year. I worked hard to feed him corn and get him fattened up for the 27th of September. I also tamed him down in the process.

Well, my grandfather fell that August, and by the time September 27th came around, none of us had the heart to kill Goose. So Goose got to go free, and we finally gave him to one of grandpaw's old hunting buddies who promised that he wouldn't kill him.

And that is the story of Goose Day as best as I could get it from my family.