The Traditional Thanksgiving Snake

No, I don't have any pictures of a delicious feast prepared by Val over three days, to be eaten in ten minutes. Maybe another year. We left the feast to The Pony this year. Which means he led us to a restaurant and let us pay. Works for me.

I do have memories of my childhood Thanksgivings, though. When we all trekked six miles to my grandma's house (Mom's mom) to join Mom's three brothers and their families. We visited Grandma at least once a week, and knew it was getting near Thanksgiving when she cleared the giant jigsaw puzzle off her dining room table. The puzzles changed often, what with Grandma working as a night-shift aide at the nearby state hospital for the mentally ill. Or as people around here called it, "Number Four." I guess it was State Hospital #4. Anyhoo... Grandma could bring home puzzles from the ward, work them, then take them back to exchange for others. Lots of ocean and sky in those puzzles. Very challenging.

Anyhoo... Grandma made every dish, as far as I remember. One of the more unique items was probably the meat loaf. Even as a kid, I was pretty sure most people didn't serve a Thanksgiving meat loaf. Oh, we had a big turkey! But also a meat loaf. That's because Mom's oldest brother would eat neither fish nor fowl.

Of course I was always seated at the Kids' Table. You had to wait until somebody died off, or couldn't make it, and then the married cousins ahead of you filled those slots first. Not a big deal, until around college age, when eating with the kids of the cousins!

After eating, we'd take a ride on the hay wagon pulled by the tractor, down into the Christmas tree fields, to tag our tree. Grandma and one of Mom's brothers ran a Christmas tree farm. Scotch Pine. All relatives got a free tree. That can add up pretty fast, but they did a booming business, letting people cut their own, or choose from those cut on the lot, or by selling in bulk to organizations who would resell them at grocery store lots.

Anyhoo... if you wanted to walk off your big Thanksgiving dinner, you could go early, or trail along behind the wagon on foot. Nobody cut their tree that early. We tied tags on them with red ribbon, with our name. Then came back closer to Christmas to cut them. It was about a half mile down to the fields. So some walked, but rode back. We weren't THAT health-conscious!

You never knew what kind of weather we'd have. Sometimes it was downright hot, in the 70s. And other years below freezing, with a fire in the fireplace. One year we walked in to see an uncle on his way out, balancing a giant black snake on a broom handle! No! It wasn't a party game! What kind of hillbillies do you think we are? Not the snake-handling kind, that's for sure.

The giant black snake had been warming his scales in the long baseboard heater under the living room picture window. The long baseboard heater that was an arm's length from where we kids liked to lie on the floor, next the the Dall Sheepskin rug under the round coffee table on the other arm's length side, to watch TV. Oh, well. Nobody freaked out. It was a black snake, by cracky! A farmer's friend. They just tossed it outside.

After the tree-choosing, people traipsed back in. Men watched football. Women gossiped about the men. Dishes were done. Kids played PIT on the kitchen table. Not a game of which I'm fond. Then gradually folks would wander into the kitchen, and Grandma would ask if they were hungry, and start warming the food again. After another plate, families would pack up some leftovers and hit the road. Eager to do it again at Christmas.