O, Thanksgiving

Another Thanksgiving -- another opportunity for memories, another occasion to be nice to a relative by marriage, another day when our automaking brethren have to struggle by on a $75-an-hour paid holiday -- has come and gone.

Because I'm writing this column on Tuesday for deadline purposes, I can't provide many details about the Sullivan Thanksgiving of 2008 or how Miss Kitty spent most of the day crouched to pounce on the mouse that may or may not exist in the tall tangle of ivy in the flower bed next to the privacy fence.

What I can offer, however, are some snippets of past Thanksgiving celebrations.

Don't we all have our own ways of remembering the best, and the worst, of those major celebrations that mark the passing of our lives? Let me recall a few of mine:

• When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was spent with aunts, uncles and cousins at our farmhouse in the Killough Valley or at one of their houses. When I think of the kitchen in that farmhouse, I see the Maytag gas stove, the Maytag refrigerator, the kitchen sink with no running water, several metal cabinets and a plain wood table with solid oak chairs my mother ordered from a school-supply catalog when she was teaching in one-room schoolhouses. How did the turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, green beans, beets, creamed corn, coleslaw, pies (pumpkin and mincemeat), cakes (chocolate with chocolate frosting and yellow with coconut frosting), yeast rolls, homemade butter, jellies and pickles get to the dining room from that sparse kitchen? The only thing that came from a tin can was the jellied cranberry sauce. My mother didn't cotton to fresh cranberries. "That would be a lot of work," she would say, paying no heed to the effort it took to do Thanksgiving dinner.
• I was a picky eater as a child, and it was at several Thanksgiving dinners that I learned to try new tastes, like giblet gravy (thank God no one bothered to tell me what giblets are), stuffed green olives and mincemeat pie made with venison.
• My most amazing experience on Thanksgiving came when I was 8 or 9 years old and we were at my Uncle Carl's house. His eldest daughter was just finishing high school, and my cousin was set on becoming a fashion model. She had the looks. Every family photo she's in shows a striking blonde striking a pose. At dinner that day, she filled her plate -- the whole plate -- with mashed potatoes and gravy and nothing else, found a comfortable seat in the living room and scarfed through her pile of spuds. She was skinny as a rail. As it turned out, she became a successful New York fashion model, married a wealthy entrepreneur, had kids, went to law school and still practices criminal law defending mostly indigent clients whose current homes have high walls topped by razor wire and guard towers. I wonder if she still binges on mashed potatoes.
• My all-time favorite Thanksgiving memory comes from the dinner at my wife's folks' during the administration of the first Bush. Grandma wouldn't let anyone start eating until the blessing had been said, but that year no one volunteered. As everyone watched the food without moving a muscle lest even a blink be considered stepping up to the task at hand, our younger son, who was 15 at the time and not noted for religious orations, said, "I'll do it." Then, knowing his grandparents were lifelong Republicans, he launched into the most eloquent entreaty to the Almighty, asking for blessings not only on the bountiful food and the hands that had prepared it, but also our great nation of sensible Republicans and our noble president and commander in chief. It was hard to tell where sincerity drifted off into political shilling, but he pulled it off magnificently in spite of the laughter some of us were trying to stifle. When he finished, a wide-eyed Grandma said, "Well, I certainly think we can eat now."

R. Joe Sullivan is the editorial page editor of the Southeast Missourian. E-mail: jsullivan@semissourian.com.