So while I was lugging it to the car--didn't bother to use a cart since I only had the turkey, a bag of stuffing, and a couple cans of cranberry sauce--I started thinking about Thanksgiving traditions. I only have a handful, and they're pretty silly, but at least they're mine.
The first one is the Sunday buying-of-the-turkey, for which I've already jumped the chocks. Next comes the night-before-Thanksgiving. Growing up in our rambling old house in Connecticut there existed that nauseatingly traditional division of holiday labor between my parents: Mom cooked, and Dad tended bar for the Thanksgiving guests. There was one very special exception to this pattern, however. On Thanksgiving Eve, my father would haul out the blender and make turkey "dressing," which is known these days as "stuffing." It involved creating lots of bread crumbs and mixing them with . . . something. I think it was celery, but honestly, it's been too many years to remember. I just buy the Pepperidge Farm stuff in the bag.
It seemed to take him hours to make a few pounds of dressing and he made a huge production out of it. But that was okay with my sisters and me, because we had entertainment--though there was a certain amount of that to be had just by watching Dad work in the kitchen--in the form of holiday TV. Many decades before the Hallmark Channel barrage of holiday movies, there was the Thanksgiving airing of The Wizard of Oz. Thanksgiving couldn't come unless we watched The Wizard of Oz on the night before--and unless Dad made the dressing (never mind that Mom was crazy busy making like nine hundred other things, would only catch a few hours of sleep that night and be up at dawn's early light Thanksgiving morning to get the enormous turkey in the oven.)
The Wizard of Oz has been replaced with Addams Family Values as my sense of humor has gotten . . . weirder. My favorite scene finds Wednesday Addams and her brother Pugsly doing hard time at summer camp, forced to take part in a play very loosely based on the first Thanksgiving. Wednesday plays a Native American maiden and a preppy fellow camper plays Pilgrim Sarah Miller. As they prepare to sit down to the feast, Wednesday improvises, abandoning the script:
"Wait! . . . We cannot break bread with you. . . . You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadsides. You will play golf and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, 'Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller'. . . . And for all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground."
Very funny. Catch that scene on YouTube.-- from Addams Family Values
Thanksgiving morning we all paused from the food preparation duties to catch at least a few minutes of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. My Mom liked the marching bands best. I was a fan of any pretty horses being ridden. Now I'm the one who likes the bands best. I rate the Rockettes a close second.
A few years--okay, maybe more than a few years--went by and I picked up another tradition: listening to Arlo Guthrie's rendition of the classic, Alice's Restaurant, on the radio. Had to be on the radio. Even though much more convenient media have appeared, I still try to listen to it on the radio. There's always some station playing it just around noon on Thanksgiving.
At the height of my flying career, an unwilling tradition of mine became sitting in hotel rooms in random cities near where we'd parked my current employer's airplane. That's one tradition I've happily let go.
On Thanksgiving afternoon, of course, there was football. Though I'm not much of a fan, I used to watch with those members of the family who were. Sometimes I tune in just for old time's sake.
In between second helpings of pie, football, and helping to shuttle various family members back to their homes, my nuclear family always found time to snipe at the neighbors who were already putting up their outdoor Christmas decorations. Our family felt that it was positively unseemly to hang decorations outdoors--or indoors, for that matter--until at least the first of December. You can now understand my consternation in a previous post regarding my current neighbors hanging outdoor wreaths on November fifth!
Two new traditions I started last year are watching the dog show after the Macy's parade and taking my own dog for an early, long walk. I imagine the dog show will be on again this year, but the dog walkies tradition has less impact because I take my dog for a long walk every day now that I live in a neighborhood where you don't get run over if you venture beyond your driveway.
And last, but not least, comes a tradition from an old friend who insisted that before Thanksgiving it simply couldn't snow--not as in, climatologically impossible, but as in, once again, unseemly and unseasonal--before Thanksgiving. Never mind that I've seen Halloween snowstorms in the Northeast and there's already been plenty of snow in Colorado. And then there are places that have permanent glaciers and all that, but the spirit of the tradition is simply that one says, "Okay, it's Thanksgiving, now it can snow." It's a kind of welcome to the coming winter season--a timely welcome, that is. It is my replacement for that gauche tradition which I most emphatically DO NOT observe, "Black Friday." Bah! Humbug! on that one. I stay home and write. And eat leftovers.
I forgot the Jude Hayes Mysteries scene from Remover of Obstacles, had to edit the post:
“Great.” I sighed. “Well, I’m afraid it’s time to do some digging, literally and figuratively—first, the literal part.” We filled our plates from the serving dishes and found a small table set in an alcove out of the way of the action, intended for just this purpose. We settled in and tucked eagerly into the food.
Ming paused long enough to say, “Whoa, Bethie and G. outdid themselves this time. A.J.’s got nothing to complain about here. This meal would make Simone jealous.”
Clicker gave him a pointed look, “Dude.”
“Well, okay, maybe not, but she should be.” Clicker nodded agreement.
I forked in another mouthful of perfectly cooked “carpetbagger” steak—how appropriate for the moneyed set—and chewed blissfully. Finally I was able to tear my attention away from my plate long enough to say, “Before the fun started, I was telling Clicker that I ran into Roach and Ganapati in the wine cellar. They broke off a very private discussion when I came out of the wine room.”
“’Roach?’” Ming asked.
“That’s what Clicker and DBC call the wine expert. His name’s Rochambeau.”
“Definitely fits him,” Ming declared. “A bug who feeds off rich people’s leavings. And just in love with himself. It was lots of fun waiting on him.”
Clicker laughed. “Eh, no lie, Dude. Better you than me! I warned Jude.” His expression became suddenly thoughtful. “Ya know, that wine alcove’s a favorite place for private discussions. Rumor has it that other dirty deeds have been done down there, too.” He grinned.
“And you would know this, how?”
“Oh, we’ve done lots of gigs here.” He sat up officiously and hooked his fingers in his vest pockets. “Gossip is merely professional courtesy among the help.”
I couldn’t help giggling a little. “As I was saying, there’s something going on with those two. And if I’m not mistaken, the hospital big-wig who emceed was with the other two the afternoon of the murder. How convenient that they’re all at the same table. Wonder what else they have in common?”
“Nuclear egos, Boss, if nothing else,” Ming said disgustedly. “They’re real assholes who keep trying to outdo each other by telling big, fat blowhard lies. And Roach keeps ordering me around like he was a straw boss and I was cheap Chinese labor building the Transcontinental Railroad.”
“My aunt Sadie dumped a bowl of hot soup over a guy’s head for that highhanded routine—and she was eighty at the time,” I said cheerfully.
“Old ladies are mean, Dudette.”
Clicker’s timing in delivering that remark was particularly unfortunate as A.J. chose that moment to appear behind him, resplendent in a black velvet jacket and mauve skirt.
“Only when mean people cross us, Stanley.” Clicker almost choked on his steak as she patted him on the arm and said, “Oh, don’t worry, I know you couldn’t possibly have meant me, dear.”
“Uh, no ma’am, of course not—my apologies. Family story of Jude’s.” He smiled sickly.
A.J. pulled out the fourth chair at our table and unaffectedly sat down, smoothing out her formal skirt. “Now, tell me what you three have learned so far.” She fixed each of us in turn with those probing hazel eyes.
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