The Boomer Chronicles

My cousin Dan (you know him — he’s Dan the Early Retired Man who has written a whole bunch of posts for this blog) and our families spent every childhood Thanksgiving together at his house. Well, almost every Thanksgiving. Read Dan’s post:

Thanksgiving was always at my house. I never gave it another thought until 1971. That year, as a 16-year-old kid who had just started his first job with the Postal Service, I had to work on Thanksgiving.

The large mail processing plants of the U.S. Postal Service never close. There are no locks on the doors because the mail moves 365 days per year. In 1971, I reported to work at 4:00 in the afternoon. My extended family was at my house as normal and I was sitting on a stool in front of a “Benjamin Franklin” case sorting outbound mail. I had been an employee only a few weeks and I already hated sorting mail. Sometime that night I realized what I was missing, and declared Thanksgiving my favorite holiday.

One year my mother stated that she would like to enjoy Thanksgiving by going to someone else’s house. I relented and we all went to a cousin’s home to celebrate the holiday. I hated it. A few years later and now married, I went to one of my wife’s relatives for Thanksgiving. The doorbell rang and the turkey was brought in by a caterer. I hated that even more. I’m sure both of these Thanksgiving dinners were fine but it wasn’t my mother’s chicken soup, it wasn’t my mother’s stuffing and it wasn’t my mother who was forgetting to put the cranberry sauce on the table. I soon decreed that all future Thanksgiving celebrations MUST be at her house.

Eventually, the responsibility of Thanksgiving was passed down to me. I clean the carpet, dust the chandelier, and remember to put out the cranberry sauce, but the real work falls to my wife. To her credit, my wife has taken the Thanksgiving baton and run with it. Of course, my wife has made some changes. Mashed potatoes instead of baked; gravy; wide noodles in the soup instead of the thin ones my mother used; and her mother’s green bean casserole. My mother made an apple pie, my wife makes a fanatical buffet of pies, cakes, and cookies. It is a tryptophan-laced, carbohydrate- infused, sugar rush fit for a king.

We now cook two turkeys, my wife’s traditional roasted turkey and a deep-fried turkey. My son and I had talked about frying a turkey for years so I finally bought the equipment. Last year my wife’s turkey was still better than our deep-fried variety, so this year I’m going all out. Minnesota is one of the largest turkey-producing states in the country so I’m driving 120 miles west for a Minnesota- raised, free range, organic turkey. My wife’s turkey is a formidable opponent so I need all the help I can get.

As my kids grew up, I made another Thanksgiving declaration; ALL CHILDREN MUST BE HOME FOR THANKSGIVING. You cannot go to friend’s house, you cannot stay at school, and you cannot work, even for double time. Now with a newly married daughter 1,200 miles away, I understand that I might have to make exceptions to this decree, but not this year. This year at least, my married daughter and new son-in-law are following my rules and heading west on the worst flying day of the year.

I now view the Thanksgiving spectacle from the head of the table. Actually, it’s my mother’s dining room table, the table that I grew up with. It’s a little too big for our dining room but I insisted on having it after my mother passed away. Sitting at the head of the table is one of my favorite things to do, especially on Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, and I haven’t missed one since 1971.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 10:48 am and is filed under General Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.