"Turning Thanks"

On this Thanksgiving eve I am reflecting upon the anticipation and excitement I had for this holiday when growing up. We would get up early and make the two hour trip from our home in Georgetown, KY to my grandparent’s farm near London, KY. I always loved the activities of my grandfather’s farm. Upon our arrival we could find my grandmother busy at work in the kitchen. My grandmother was a wonderful cook. My favorite food she made on thanksgiving was cornbread dressing complete with onions and celery and spices and of course the giblets. For those of you who are unsophisticated, giblets are the edible inner organs of a foul typically including the heart, gizzard, liver and the neck. It’s the stuff you find wrapped up or bagged up and stuffed into the inner cavity of your thanksgiving bird. My grandmother always made the dressing into patties and then baked them and we would eat the leftover dressing patties all day as if they were candy. There was always fruit salad and for some reason my father received the task of cutting up the fruit. Usually we could find my grandfather at the tobacco barn where he would be stripping the cured tobacco leaves from the stalks in preparation for market. I would be there with him, helping, and enjoying the smell and the warmth of the fire in the potbellied stove. Since dinner was usually a little late on Thanksgiving we could get in a good half day of labor and work up a good appetite. Thanksgiving was one of the rare times my grandmother would get out her good table cloth and make use of her good silverware and china. It was one of the few times we had the privilege of sitting at the big table in the dinning room. My grandfather would take his place at the head of the table and we would each take the places assigned to us. My grandfather would then look at my father and say “Larry, turn thanks”. My father would pray and we would enjoy the feast.

This is the first thanksgiving in my 56 years that I will not be able to see or to make a phone call to my father. He will be at a different banquet table that I do not yet have access to. But when I sit down with my loved ones to enjoy our thanksgiving meal I am certain I will remember him when I “turn thanks”.

You are Rich Grandma

Not long after my grandfather Williams died my grandmother moved into a small house in Pittsburg, KY. Though she had moved often in her life and the distance was short I suspect the move was a bit traumatic. It was the first time in all her life that she would live alone. She had gotten married when she was seventeen and had raised eleven children. She was accustomed to a full house, but now everyone was gone. But in moving to the little house in Pittsburg she would not be quite alone for the little house was owned by my Uncle Harve. Only a narrow driveway separated the place my grandmother lived from the larger two story house where Uncle Harve and Aunt Creatie lived. They had operated a store from the building my grandmother lived and upon retirement transformed it into a dwelling.

The house did not have indoor plumbing. Grandma got her water from a well out back. We drew it up with a rope and a bucket. She kept a bucket of drinking water sitting in the kitchen. We drank from a dipper and we all used the same dipper. It was such fun. When we needed to use the toilet we went outside to the little white privy that Grandma shared with Uncle Harve and Aunt Creatie. Grandma had a garden on the other side of the house. She was an avid gardener but this little piece of land did not yield much for her toil. There was too much shade and the soil had a lot of cinders and slate mixed in it. Few means would have been taken to amend the soil structure or fertility. It was just her, a spade and a hoe, and the seed she had saved from the year before.

I would have been between the ages of 5 and 10 when I would go there and spend the day or night. When visiting there I would bounce back and forth between Grandma’s house and Uncle Harve and Aunt Creatie’s. It was only about six “boy steps” from one back door step to the next. Between those door steps I discovered the beauty of my elders. I was full of questions. They would listen. They would take time to answer. I absorbed the answers and marveled at their stories about things and days gone by. It was just them and me. I felt special. I had the opportunity to watch common ordinary folks with meager resources enjoy the simple miniscule things of life.

Both houses sat back no more than 10 feet from the road. Perhaps it was another 100 feet to the tracks of the L & N Railroad. We would sit on the front porch and listen for the trains. Uncle Harve was blind. When the train would come by he would ask me to count the railcars. They were often long trains with well over 100 cars. Each train had a caboose in those days and usually there would be a man riding in the caboose. If you waved at him he would wave back. Till this day if I am stopped at a railroad crossing I will start counting railcars. But there is never a caboose. Uncle Harve would peel the potatoes. I marveled at this blind man’s skill with a paring knife. Sometimes he would sing while doing it. I learned a valuable lesson in those visits that I have to remind myself of quite often. One does not have to have much in life to be happy but you do have to learn to enjoy what you have.

Once when I was staying with Grandma we had to go to town. She had received her check. She called a cab and we went to London. We went to the bank where she cashed her check. I remember the amount. It was $82.00. I looked at her and said “Grandma, you are rich”! I think she smiled. We went to a couple of stores up town, and then we went to the grocery store. The cab came and took us back to Pittsburg. She paid the cabdriver. She would have paid Uncle Harve the rent and I suppose she had an electric bill. I think even then I came to understand that my Grandma was not rich. But I sure am rich for the experience.