Today I saw a post on Facebook, asking readers to submit their Thanksgiving memories. Thinking back, my Thanksgiving memories may be different than most people’s. My dad was in the military, so we lived on or near Air Force bases until I was a junior in high school. That being the case, the closest we ever lived to any relatives was 500 miles away. While we could make that trek easily enough in the summer, it wasn’t so easy during the holidays with snow and/or ice issues that northern Midwest states deal with that time of year.
The one Thanksgiving that we did go to my grandparents’ house in Michigan. I was around 5 years old, and we drove from northern Wisconsin through Illinois and up to central Michigan. The trip there was fine, but on the way back, my parents decided to take the ferry across Lake Michigan back to Wisconsin, rather than driving through Chicago. Unfortunately, the ferry got stuck in the ice in the middle of the lake, and we were stranded overnight on the ferry. We lived for 24 hours on vending machine food, and for entertainment, we were gifted two decks of playing cards. Both had pictures of cats on them. I can still see them in my mind’s eye. An ice breaker came to our rescue the next day.
That was the end of trying to attempt that trip during the cold-weather months, so our family created our own Thanksgiving traditions. Dad was in charge of cooking the turkey, the dressing (the best ever), and the mashed potatoes, and Mom took care of the sides dishes (canned corn, sliced jelled cranberry, and pumpkin pie). I can remember the kitchen being steamy all morning as the cooking progressed.
For me and my two older brothers, Thanksgiving started with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Mom and Dad would poke their heads into the den to check out the parade every now and then. Mom was particularly interested in the band performances because she had played the clarinet in marching band when she was in high school. She even had her parents open enroll her to a high school in another neighborhood so that she could be in their marching band, because they had a trip on the docket to New York City, which turned out to be one of the highlights of her high school years.
Dad loved every bit of the parade. He grew up in the Bronx, and had seen the parade in person several times as a child, so it was a special memory for him, particularly since he lost his dad when he was only 5, and his mom when he was 14.
Our Thanksgiving meal was a feast. Dad reigned over the turkey, using his electric knife to precisely slice it. He was the only one interested in the gizzards, neck, etc., so he got those parts for himself.
Unlike me, the person whose food was segregated on my plate, Dad created Thanksgiving Mountain on his, starting with the turkey, then the dressing, the mashed potatoes, the corn, the cranberries, all topped off with a generous serving of gravy. I always asked how he could mix his food like that, and he told me that it all got mixed in the end when it went into his stomach, so why not start that way?
After lunch, the guys watched football while Mom and I handwashed the dishes (no dishwasher for our family in the 1970s) and packed away the leftovers. When I finished, I joined the boys in the den. I didn’t know much about football at that time, but I liked being part of the camaraderie.
When the game ended, around 3:00, it was off to the bowling alley. Back then, there were no bumpers, so it was a challenge for a scrawny kid like me to get the ball down to the pins without hitting the gutters. I don’t think I ever even got near 100 (or 50, for that matter). Dad and Mom were both on bowling leagues, so they were solid bowlers. But, one day a year, we had this special time together as a family. (If you read my book Anything But Groovy, you can discover more about our holiday traditions, including Thanksgiving and Christmas, but with a time-travel twist: think, a combo of “Back to the Future” and “Freaky Friday”.)
Christmas had a similar vibe. Mom was the queen of creating magical Christmases, even if Dad took credit for buying and wrapping the gifts (a family joke that went on for decades). This year will be my first Thanksgiving without my dad, but I treasure the memories we created back then. It may have been just the five of us, but we were a team and made the best of what we had.
Happy Thanksgiving, Dad! I still don’t allow my food to intermingle on my plate, so I won’t be creating Thanksgiving Mountain, but I’ll be thinking of you!