Thanksgiving day memories

I had a nice Thanksgiving Day feast yesterday.  My cigar buddy bus driver invited me over to his family’s feast.  The turkey was fine, the potatoes good, the sweet potatoes tasty, and the cranberries were extra delicious.  I had me a piece of pumpkin pie and one of the fudge cream pie too.  It was a good feast.

My friend is the granpa of the family; it was interesting to watch the interation between family members and to have no stake in how things turned out.  It was my friend’s birthday party (actually, the day is today) so I wrapped up two tins of cigars – good ones – and presented my gift in a "plain brown wrapper".  Those tins are 20 some dollars each at a cigar store, but I got a good deal online, so… 9 cigars for someone who appreciates a good cigar is a good gift.

I left my van at my friend’s house, and in the afternoon, he took me back to it and I drove home to find that home was where I wanted to be, and so I stayed, instead of going over to A & J’s place.  She had called during my visit with my cigar buddy’s family, with an offer of dessert.

I stayed up past my usual bedtime, briefly, delighted that I didn’t have to work the next day, and woke up ove an hour later than normal – ahhhhh.  I napped around mid-day and am up again with some good coffee, a $13.00 cigar (it is a holiday) and am thinking of past Thanksgiving days.

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Thanksgiving at the Ranch campus was about the only time we were required to dress in prep school clothes.  It was odd to see everyone in suits…or parts of suits.  Tie tying was an art that had to be retraught to boys who never wore ties unless forced to.  There was always the traditon table set; turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, pie – the whole nine yards.  The last one I went to there at the ranch was in 1979, and omg, I just realised that that was nearly 30 years ago!

20 years ago was the first Thanksgiving we lived in Oregon for; we didn’t do anything special and found that nearly all the restaurants were closed, except for our neighborhood Chinese restaurtant.  There was no turkey in that meal.

The first Thanksgiving I spent in Japan was for 1985.  My Japanese wife had lived here in the states long enough, and loved me enough (:-)) to want to fix a traditional Thanksgiving there.  Turkey was almost impossible to find – she ended up with a ten pound bird, barely larger than a chicken, and sweet potatoes were not to be had in the whole country.  It was a reasonable facimile of the traditonal Thanskgiving feast, given the foreign setting, but it wasn’t the same.  I gave my wife lots of points for the effort though, but for the next few years, we didn’t do Thanksgiving.

A few years later, we lived in a 14th floor apartment on Park Ave. downtown and had a real feast with our friend, the Pieman.  He wanted the full on feast, but had to have more people around than just he and his dog, so he came over with all the ingredients and used our kitchen to whip up a lovely feast, complete with a French Silk pie for dessert that likely had as many calories in one thin slice as the whole bird did.

We stepped out on the balcony for a smoke after dinner (there was a spendid view from that balcony) and turned around to look in the window and found my first black cat’s tail sticking out of the trurkey’s neck, the rest of him inside the bird, purring loudly.

 

 

I guess the most memorable Thanksgiving feast was the one I had in Cuba.

I was assigned to a new ship, a frigate, built in Bath, Maine, and stationed in Charleston, South Carolina.  It was Commissioned in August, 1983, and that year, we found ourselves in Cuba, training the crew to work their new ship in whatever way the Navy needed.  A frigate is an escort ship; we practised steaming in formations for convoys, and found submarines, and steamed in (to an engineer) pointless circles.

Thanksgiving Day found us tied up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  The Captain and the Exectutive officer manned the messline personally and served the crew a Navy Thanksgiving dinner, complete with everything, including voideo cameras on the messdeck that recorded the crew’s Thanksgiving feast for the families back home.

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There is much to be thankful for:

Here I am, another day.

I don’t have to work again until tomorrow morning, today being a paid day off.

Two days ago it was payday; I’ll feel wealthy until I pay the bills.

I have plans for tonight that may include something to be extra thankful for…details some other time 😉

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