“What are you thankful for?

Thanksgiving is coming and I, like many residents around the valley, am remembering past Thanksgivings.

Tension best describes my first memories of Thanksgiving.  My mother had just cooked her first Turkey dinner. We were standing with our faces pressed against the cold glass of the dining room window straining to see through the snowy veil of a West Virginia blizzard.  Dad had invited his out-of-state boss to share our meal and the   brought his rifle to “get in a little hunting”. As mom wrung her apron over and over into a tiny knot, she kept muttering, ”If he’s gotten himself lost in that snow storm, I’m going to kill him!”

One son recalled the great Thanksgivings when our extended family always packed their turkey and all the trimmings and headed for a desert picnic outside Phoenix. The kids rode go-carts, flew kites and launched rockets. Grandpa set up tables and the tailgates of pickups served as buffet sideboards.  He remembers waiting over an hour one year for cousins to arrive with the silverware. Grandma said she would give them another assignment the next year!

A friend told me about the Oklahoma farm Thanksgivings of her childhood.  Sometimes turkey, but often a whole, crackling pig was roasted. They had cornbread dressing, cranberries and sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Cherry, pumpkin and apple pie with a scoop of cream whipped fresh that day with a hand turned beater. There was always a dark chocolate and a huge angel food cake.  “One aunt was the angel food champion. My aunts whispered suspicions that she used more egg whites instead of the standard 12 in her cake.”

The men ate first because there wasn’t enough room for everybody to sit down together. When they were finished and went outside to smoke and “chew the fat”, the women and children ate.   “The best part of the day was playing with my cousins. Hide and Seek in the barn was my favorite, but then the older kids would organize a Crack the Whip game and since I was the littlest they made me be on the tail end. That took the fun right out of Thanksgiving!”

Another friend described Thanksgiving dinner at an aunt’s Maryland farm. The table was set with scalloped edged china covered in large blue flowers and gleaming silverware with a rose pattern.  The prisms hanging from the crystal candelabra cast soft rainbows on the diners. Of course, that was the adult table. She remembers yearning to graduate to the big table and listen to the uncles’ stories and take part in the adult conversation. On one of those Thanksgivings, the turkey had to be carved in the kitchen instead of at the table.  Most of the guests didn’t know that a couple of the family dogs had already helped themselves to one whole side of breast!

My resident historian said that his first memory of Thanksgiving was during WWII. A fourth grade classmate invited him to share a lonely dinner with him and his mom. The dad was on a destroyer somewhere in the Atlantic.

During the war years, my Mother instructed Dad to “go down to the USO and bring home some soldiers to share Thanksgiving dinner with us and the girls.” Much to our disappoinment,  he usually managed to return with older married guys. Mom always said Dad didn’t “fall off the turnip truck yesterday.”

I asked a seven-year-old what he was thankful for at Thanksgiving time.

“That Christmas is coming”

Well, there’s that too.