Posted tagged ‘Thanksgiving dinner’

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“When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things — not the great occasions — give off the greatest glow of happiness.”

November 27, 2015

Dinner was wonderful. The plate was tottering under the weight of all the food. There was even enough to bring home for me to have leftovers tonight, a whole meal of leftovers.

The restaurant was already lit for the festive season, and on the drive home we also saw houses bright with lights, some in white and others multi-colored. I always feel like a kid when it comes to Christmas lights. Even alone in the car I ooh and aah. Every year I take Gracie, and we go on a see the lights trip, just as I did with my family when I was growing up. I remember my brother was at one back seat window, and I was at the other. We’d yell out, “There’s another one,” and all heads would swivel to see the house. We had favorite houses and favorite streets. A few streets in Saugus had a neighborhood competition. All the houses were bright with strings of colored lights from those large outside bulbs we had when I was a kid. The colors were true and they were beautiful. We’d drive through the streets with our mouths wide in wonder. Nobody had to say a word as every house was lit. Our heads went back and forth quickly so we wouldn’t miss a thing.

My hometown fire station had a Santa climbing a ladder to the top of the bell tower. The town hall down the street from the fire station was out-lined in lights. The square had lights strung across the main street from building to building. One house, a couple of blocks from mine, had the whole house outlined in lights including every window and door. Lights also ran across the top of the fence surrounding their yard. I remember they had collies running in the yard. My dad decorated the bushes in the front of the house, and we had Christmas lights in the windows, the ones you turned on and off by twisting the bulbs. If I close my eyes, I can see the picture window with a light on each side and a light with five bulbs in the middle. I remember the bulbs were orange.

I was always excited to see those lights they were the signal that Christmas was creeping nearer and nearer.

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“You’re makin more racket than an empty wagon on a froze-over road.”

November 29, 2013

It isn’t yet the proverbial crack of dawn and here I am wide-eyed and bushy-tailed (clichés must be an early morning phenomenon). I blame it on the turkey and all the fixings. When I got home after dinner, I was filled to the gills (oops, another one) and so sleepy I went to bed before 9.

Dinner was spectacular and the table, filled with food, groaned under the weight of green bean casserole, stuffing, squash, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, grandma’s cole slaw and the star of the day, the turkey. We sat and ate for the longest time. Conversation was at a minimum. Mostly it was requests for one dish or another to be passed. Romper Room’s Miss Jean would have made all of us members of the clean plate club. After dinner, we waddled into the living room and watched TV hoping dinner would settle enough so we could have pie. We all managed. There’s always room for pie. The dinner was an unqualified success!

I can’t imagine dragging myself out of bed to get dressed and go shopping. The lead story on the 5 o’clock news was about the long lines of people waiting in the cold for stores to open. I got to hear one woman describe the toy she was buying. News must have been really scarce this morning.

Gracie is asleep and snoring beside me on the couch. Fern is asleep behind me on the back couch cushion. I have no idea where Maddie is but I figure she is probably sleeping upstairs. I am the only one awake. The TV is on, and I am immersed in black and white. I’ve watched Wanted Dead or Alive and My Three Sons and am now watching Petticoat Junction. Wanted Dead or Alive had Santa Claus, the real one. He was in the house pretending to be someone else and on Christmas morning he had disappeared. The doors were still locked on the inside, and there were no footprints, but there was a bell in the fireplace. On Petticoat they are decorating for Christmas, including the Cannonball and a cow with a bow on her head and a gift tag around her neck. I used to watch that show all the time. It is just awful, and I never noticed.

The Beverly Hillbillies are on, and I’d hate to miss them. I sang along with the theme song and remembered every word. The Clampetts  are returning home to the mountains for Christmas, “Happy as a pack of squirrels returning to their nest.”

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“Forever on Thanksgiving Day The heart will find the pathway home.”

November 20, 2012

It was not a hallucination. I swear when I first woke up this morning there was sun. I smiled, turned over, went back to sleep and missed it. By the time I woke up for good, it was gone; however, these familiar clouds have proverbial silver linings. On the weather last night we were fifteen degrees warmer than Boston and Southern New Hampshire. The weatherman said it was a combination of the warmer ocean and the cloud effect so I have stopped complaining about the lack of sunlight. I’ll just take more vitamin D than usual.

With Thanksgiving being an American holiday we still had to teach when I was in Ghana, but that didn’t stop us from honoring the day. We had a huge Thanksgiving dinner one year with several guests, one turkey, a few chickens, side dishes and pies. The owner of the turkey was a hard bargainer and Thomas, the cook, had to follow the man all the way to his village before he’d sell the turkey. When I was in Bolga last summer, I was amazed by the number of turkeys wandering around. In my two years living there I saw only that one which ended up being the showcase of our feast. The chickens you bought live, still do. You get to pick yours like we pick lobsters from the tank. The man hands you the chicken by its bound feet. I used to hang them from the arms of my moto (motorcycle) to get them home. Someone else always sent the chickens to their heavenly reward. I never could. The year of the giant feast we plucked the chickens. All of them, already having met their demise, were brought to us in a huge bucket. All of a sudden a few of them popped right out of the bucket onto the ground. No, they didn’t run around without their heads. They just popped. I knew scientifically why that had happened but it was still sort of amazing in its own weird way.

That was the year I made my very first pies ever, pawpaw pies. I made the dough, cut up the pawpaws and then added sugar and cinnamon. The cookbook Peace Corps had given us, Ghana Chop (chop being food), said that pawpaw pie would taste just like apple when you added the spices. I brought the two pies to the school’s beehive, clay oven. The cooks put them on the side of the oven away from the intense heat of the middle, but they still took only about 15 or 20 minutes to cook. They were delicious and they tasted exactly like apple pies.

That Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorites.

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