We at The Flying Pie are nothing if not grateful for the many boons bestowed upon us by The Cosmic Arranger, sympathetic followers and dumb luck, and each Thanksgiving Day we come forth to celebrate our benefactors. The Holiday, of course, is the most nostalgic day of the year for Americans, a teary bunch who fondly recall the glories of home, family and Thanksgivings past. Deep in November it’s nice to remember when you were a young and callow fellow.
Thanksgiving, commonly called Turkey Day, is, of course, our most food-oriented day of the year, a time when giant dining room tables are challenged by an impossible array of ingestibles whipped up as if by magic in the kitchens of strange female beings schooled in conjuring by generations of forebears. Without them, Thanksgiving would be an impossibility, a hollow joke, a mere shell of itself. So, while we are giving thanks, let’s not forget the most indispensible holiday element of all. Let’s bow down before:
Grandmothers
They weren’t always grandmothers, of course, once they were normal humans like you and I. Most of them lived pedestrian lives, went to school, married, raised families, played mahjongg on Saturday nights. It was only when their daughters or daughters-in-law delivered a firstborn child that things changed. Suddenly, mysterious vapors enveloped these women, strange vortices sucked them up into interstellar space and delivered them to the Planet of the Nanas, where they were awarded crowns, scepters and detailed instructions on How to Grandmother. Returned to Earth, they were ready for the task.
First and foremost, grandmothers are required to coddle grandchildren. It is completely irrelevant whether or not these women were demanding parents, report-card screamers or duncehat-wielding shrews. It is of little consequence if they restricted their brood to bread and water, left them in soiled diapers or chained them to the bed. Now they are grandmothers and the game has changed. Now they will dote. Now they will sell their nice homes in Boca and follow their daughters to Ketchikan, Alaska, the better to help with the grandchildren. Now they will learn where the zoo is, how to get to the ice-cream store, how much a new sled costs. Now they will badger their children to go out to dinner, take a long holiday, explore a cruise to Morocco so they can have sport with the grandchildren. And for this they are rewarded in spades. They become the greatest of heroes to the kiddies. Mom giving you a hard time about school? Call grandma, who will tell you mother was no genius at plane geometry herself. Dad won’t buy you a phone? Nana asks you what color. The folks can’t take you to the beach? Grannie will be there with her woody. Need bail for some careless misdemeanor? Nana is on the way, no questions asked.
When it comes to Thanksgiving, nothing is of greater consequence. Grandmothers plan their offensives for this imbroglio far ahead of time, like Hannibal mapping out The Battle of Cannae. Massive quantities of foodstuffs must be acquired and transported to the front. Rolling pins must be excavated and oiled. Lieutenants must be appointed to handle traffic and silverware. Guests must be seated according to the Secret Grandmother Plan, about which no questions may be asked. Should any invitee have the bad form to refuse seconds, he will be promptly frowned upon, handed his hat and coat and subtacted from future guest lists. When grandma says “Eat!” you eat. After dinner, the men will be dispersed to the living room and the women will help grandma clean up and kvetch about the men. It’s a requisite. It’s The Grandmother Way.
Nan & Bill in days of yore.
Don’t Call Me Alphonsine
My own grandmother, Alphonsine Wickey, was born in Alsace-Lorraine, but tilted German. She spoke the language faultlessly and often interjected her favorite German words into everyday English conversation, especially when she was mad, which was often. We didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and just as well. She married a Frog (her designation of Frenchmen) named Bill Gosselin and took up residence in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where the two bought a large, two-story house. The Gosselins had one child, Marie, who married at an early age and quickly bore a son named after his grandfather. That would be me. When Marie remained in the hospital for a few days after my birth, I went home with Alphonsine, who would soon become Celia, impatient with such a long signature. Perhaps because of the early bond or maybe just because she was a grandmother, Alphonsine/Celia spent the rest of her life assured that I could do no wrong, loyal to a fault. I, like Donald Thump, could have shot somebody in the middle of Winthrop Avenue and she would have shrugged and found the best lawyer in town. I can hear her now assaying the shooting victim: “Hmmph! He must have deserved it.” Grandmothers.
Celia was the Queen of Thanksgiving. She lived in the upstairs section of the house, our family in the lower half, and we alternated the sites of the dinners. I remember sitting on a tall stool in her pantry while she assembled mince and pumpkin pies from scratch, careful to make perfect indentations on the outer crust, as if the finished products were being carted off to the local museum rather than gobbled down by unappreciative neanderthals. Celia rarely sat, circling the table like a dining supervisor, not afraid to grab a serving vessel and plunk a glob of one thing or another on the plates of inadequately supplied eaters. Resistance was futile. Halfway through the meal, she would finally partake, but even then she was contemplating the readiness of the pies.
Celia lasted a long time, finally packing her bags at age 94, sharp as a tack to the finish. She never tired of Thanksgiving and all the foofaraw leading up to it, even as the scourges of age slowed her down and gradually took a toll on the original dinner guests. When the last of her old pals, Margaret Green, bought the farm, she was unusually subdued. “Margaret was the last one left,” she bemoaned, teary-eyed. Thanksgiving just won’t be the same without her.”
And now, of course, we know exactly how Celia felt. Thanksgiving remains a boundlessly happy time, a day for reunification with family and friends, for joyful reminiscences, for celebrating with new pals, for traditions of our own making. Be that as it may, there will never be another Thanksgiving the likes of which occurred in the days of yore at 53 Garfield Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts, when the Queen of Thanksgiving prowled the room, made her rounds, talked the talk and walked the walk. Nan, the day has never been the same without you.
Thanks For The Memories
One of the four leading guarantors of a joyful life is a happy childhood. Most of us growing up in the 1940s-50s couldn’t complain. We didn’t have loud, shiny malls to hang out in but we did have this magical, colorful place filled with everything we required. It was called “outside.” We ran through its streets, scuffled over its sandlots, fished in its rivers, cavorted around its parks, swam in its oceans. Our world was not enclosed within the limited borders of a cellphone. Instead of apps, we had bats and balls and jumpropes and roller skates. We wandered the land on bicycles, climbed trees, fell off a roof, built a clubhouse. We had no concern for lurking perverts, stealthy kidnappers, nitwits shooting up schools. Who would even think of that? There is nothing so terrifying as a nun filled with righteous indignation.
We had shrines. After a tough morning of baseball, we’d assemble at Leo Gervais’ corner store on Boxford Street, pull open the drink machine and swoon over the limitless array of iced tonic bottles (soda to you), everything from Nehi raspberry soda to Hires root beer to Orange Crush to A&W cream soda. True masochists and showoffs could opt for the bitterness of Moxie, flavored with the hideous gentian root extract and created by evil scientists in nearby Lowell. Moxie drinkers were considered strange and usually played catcher.
We had rules. Supper was at 5 o’clock, no exceptions. You were required to be there. You came in at night when the streetlights went on. You would be going to Mass on Sunday, for fear of not only God’s wrath but your father’s. You would never hit a girl, beat up a smaller kid or sass the nuns. You would always be polite and respect your elders, even when they were a little drunk. You would eat what was on your plate, even if it was Brussels sprouts. These rules and others may have seemed onerous at the time but not unreasonable. Lawbreakers who tested them found out their fathers owned a belt.
In late afternoon, the ice-cream man came tinkling down the street, a high point of the day. We were allowed one 5-cent choice: Popsicle, Fudgsicle or Creamsicle. Virtually everyone thought that the development of the bi-flavored popsicle was equal to the invention of the atom bomb or even Silly Putty.
The radio was King of entertainment. We’d hover around it on weekend nights listening to wisecracking Jack Benny and Phil Harris. On weekdays, we were carried off to faraway lands by Sky King, the Green Hornet and Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy. There was nothing so important as to justify interfering with the broadcast of The Lone Ranger. Kids discussed these silly rumors of something called television, with which you could actually get a picture along with the radio sounds. But how was that even possible?
When they finally arrived, all televisions broadcast in black and white. The first family on the block which had a TV invited everyone over. We kids regarded television as something akin to witchcraft. There were three channels, all operated by the major networks. They came on in the late afternoon, preceded by a Test Pattern. We had as much worth watching on our three channels then as you get today on 600. When color television arrived, it was enormously expensive. Everyone trooped down to Jenny’s bar on South Union street on Sundays to watch Super Circus and marvel at the incredible technology which made such miracles possible. Our parents let us have a sip of beer, which tasted awful. How could anyone prefer beer to ginger ale or orange soda? It was incomprehensible.
In the old days, we had block parties where entire neighborhoods put out a free spread and everyone was invited. Music played and brave little girls prodded terrified boys to dance. Males who yielded were hooted at and ridiculed by their contemporaries but nobody sneered at the blonde majesty of Mary Beth Lebreque.
There was a great sense of community in those times, when every residence housed a kid or six, where every family knew one another, where adults stopped on the street to talk, when people met after church to plan their days. Not a one of us would trade our youth for the fripperies of “modern” life. When we were kids, the days were full of merriment and magic and brilliant foolishness. After all, Ted Williams was alive, rock ‘n’ roll was being born, Summer and Salisbury Beach were just around the corner.
Those were the days, my friend/We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day.
We’d live the live we choose/We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
Cherish the day, there are only so many. Have a bountiful Thanksgiving, we’re thinking of you here in the sunny orchards of Pieland.
Siobhan as a mere yout’. Ever the scientist.
That’s all, folks….
