For decades, the mood of Thanksgiving celebrations for hundreds of area private-school families has depended on the result of a single football game, the near-century-old tilt between Loyola Blakefield and Calvert Hall. It was simple: If your school won, the turkey tasted especially good. If it lost, glum faces and sour spirits prevailed.

Which must have made Thanksgiving Day 1962 a dispirited, tedious affair all over. Nobody won that year — the final 8-8 score was the most recent of eight ties in the rivalry.

Nearly 8,200 fans showed up at Memorial Stadium, and things at first looked supremely promising for the Dons; on their first possession, halfback Dick Link scored from 9 yards out. Following the two-point conversion, Loyola was ahead, 8-0.

That’s how the first half ended, and being behind clearly didn’t sit well with the Cardinals. “Calvert Hall was a fired-up crew at the start of the second half,” Evening Sun reporter Larry Shane wrote. After recovering a fumble on the Dons’ seven-yard line, the Cardinals got on the board when fullback Joe Gorman scored from four yards out. Another successful two-point conversion, and the score was 8-8.

And that’s where it stayed. Contemporary reports don’t say how quietly the two schools’ fan bases departed the stadium. But assuredly, at homes throughout the Baltimore area that night, the Thanksgiving turkey tasted kinda bland.

chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com