Happy Thanksgiving to all of my cousins!! Let us share some stories about Thanksgiving with our families. Each of us can add a comment to this post about our own family. I'm guessing each of us has a special story and that our experiences are similar.
My father in the interest of saving money used to buy a Thanksgiving turkey and have it cut in half. Then he would serve half of it for Christmas. When I was little I always thought a turkey was supposed to have a drumstick sticking up from the middle of the plate and couldn't understand why pictures always looked so different. Thanksgiving was always a special day for us but we never watched TV so there was never football. I never watched a football game on TV until I was with Robin and we were at one of her Grandmother's cousins' (I think) place at an old farmhouse in Iowa. While I was in college, I on occassion got home for Thanksgiving but not very often. On one of those visits, I got my dad to teach me how to fix dressing.
These days I rarely get back to California for Thanksgiving as we spend that time with Robin's family. For her it is her birthday, her niece's birthday and her folk's anniversary. The trade off is that we make it back to California nearly every Christmas. Right now I am in Iowa and we leave Dec. 16 for California where we will spend 3 weeks.
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing, Tom. We had turkey and trimmings for dinner. We also had two guests that were not members of our family for dinner. One was a friend of Michelle's and the other was a friend of David's. David's friend was an elderly man who recently lost his wife. Michelle's friend was about her age. I remember when I was in the Army we had some special Thanksgiving meals with families and were their guests. We always try to invite other people to our table for special times.
I remember one Thanksgiving when we all gathered at Aunt Doris and Uncle Homer's place in Wakarusa when it snowed. We had to leave early for fear of being snowed in. On the way to the car I fell on the icy porch and slid off and down the steps. Uncle Homer had shoveled the snow off the walk but it was still slippery. It was one of the first times I realized that a farmer has to do his work whatever the weather may be. The cows had to be milked, bad weather or not. Luckily our car started (we had a Hudson Terraplane, I think) and we were on our way home down narrow Beech Road.
The idea of inviting others reminded me of Thanksgiving 1957 in Riverside, California. Dad invited 3 Indian boys from the reservation to Thanksgiving dinner. Marleen often invites others to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. One year I sat across from an F-18 pilot assigned to the USS Lincoln.
I remember one Thanksgiving at Doris'place about 1956 when I got sick. I was sent upstairs to bed and remember being fascinated by this huge old house. This was one of the events that caused me to believe that my cousins got together on a regular basis. We often lived miles away and didn't get back so often. I was envious of those toy tractors that Larry and Terry had. I have also seen pictures taken at Mary's house and at Don's house. We have a long history together.
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