With the holiday season descending upon us many traditions are looked forward to. Others will be sadly missed. And still others earned at one time or another the title of:
Dreaded Thanksgiving Tradition
1960's
Every year on Thanksgiving we had special guests, Grandma and Grandpa. We
could see their house from our front window but they only came to visit once a
year--on Thanksgiving. And they never stayed past desert. I even remember one
of my older sisters being notified to make the call. The phone call, on the
party line, to Grandma and Grandpa informing them that the turkey was coming
out of the oven. They were that close.
Maybe this is strange to some, but I was a child and didn't know
differently. I remember asking why they never came at Christmas and being
informed that they bypassed us on Christmas to go further up the lane to our
cousin's house. I was miffed until Mother smoothed it over with explaining that
there were two houses of grand-kids up there and none of us, including me when I
got older, wanted to combine three families of rowdy kids under the age of
seventeen in one house. Don't get me wrong, I love my cousins, even the boy
cousins my age, but twenty kids locked indoors for hours because it is too cold
outside to do play or do chores? I'll take Grandma and Grandpa on Turkey day.
Every year had a few new and interesting twists, but of one thing I could
always count on--Grandpa saying the prayer. Okay, so he is the patriarch and it
is his right, but we kids dreaded that prayer. In his younger years, Grandpa
was the Bishop of our sprawled community. Need I elaborate?
Didn't think so.
Love the man to death but when he prayed the sun went to sleep. He
mentioned every kid by name and thanked the Lord for them and especially if the
youth had accomplished something important in the past year-- learned how to
milk a cow, including stripping it, graduate high school the previous spring, lost
a tooth, anything at all. Lest you think that isn't bad, he didn't conclude
there. He prayed over every field, I seem to recall two ranches and a lot of
hay and potato fields. That done he would move on to the herd of sheep notated
by how many lambs the ewes had dropped last spring. From there he covered the
herd of cattle, both the milk cows and the ones going to market and the
livestock expected to drop more offspring in the coming year. Did I mention the
chickens, the geese, the gardens and the orchards? But wait, we aren't done! He
had to mention those neighbors that had weathered an overly difficult year and
those whose lives were prosperous before turning his prayer to one of blessing
the coming year.
I shouldn't bore you with all this except that I really need you to
sympathize with me when I admit to drinking my shrimp cocktail long before the
closing "amen(s)". Hey, I was a kid and I knew the turkey would be
cold--again, along with the homemade stuffing, the green beans and the jell-o
salad.
All I can say is that these days the turkey still doesn't taste right if
it isn't room temperature. Of course, the rolls were hot as they had been kept
in the warmer, but if you weren't fast, you got the frozen ones that didn't
fit. Can you really blame a kid for dreading the families Thanksgiving
Tradition?
