“What fools these mortals be!”---Puck
“Puck—sit down and eat your pie!”---His Grandmother
Turn on your television this time of year and watch the scramble coagulate, simmer, rise up and come to a boil. The airports are overpopulated, the bus stations teeming with travelers, the nation’s highways wheezing under the tons of traffic. To add to the mix, a heavy snow has inundated the train tracks in Montana, a blizzard is heading east out of Colorado and ice storms have closed half the interstates in Pennsylvania and New York, leaving homeward bound hadjis desperate, frazzled and in the first stages of panic. Someone might not get home in time for Thanksgiving. It’s a calamity of the first order, an unthinkable possibility, a fate to be avoided at all costs. Neither rain, nor snow, nor overturned semis on the New Jersey Turnpike shall stay these pilgrims from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Smug non-travelers sit back in the comfort of their manses in Boca and their tin shacks in Pflugerville and cluck at the foolishness of it all. Look at all these fools spilling out of the airports, tying up the roadways, heading for the cliff like lemmings, destined to fail. They should have better sense, make superior plans, schedule their visits for Patriots’ Day, late Spring, the 12th of Never. Ah, my friends, but that wouldn’t work at all. If they were to do that, how would they ever see The Ghosts Of Thanksgiving?
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| The Old Homestead in recent days. The late addition of a frou-frou wall is an overstatement. |
Homeward Bound
They’re an evasive lot, these seasonal spirits, not available merely at the beck and call of wishful thinkers. They live in the remote recesses of their subjects’ minds, a smoky and confusing world where precise memories are only made possible by revisiting the original shrine where the specters once dwelt, and dropping in just any day would not do. The Ghosts shined brightest on Thanksgiving, when cameraderie was in the air, where the meaning of family was underlined in red, where a man had to try hard to find a reason not to be happy and usually failed.
Wherever home is now, we prefer to subjugate the word to the place we were born and raised. The memories of childhood, youth and adolescence are the ones most valued, prized beyond all others because the starring roles were played by irreplaceable masters of the stage now lost to the ages, sainted family members, singular friends, characters beyond the talents of the greatest authors to describe. These were the beings of fables, gifted with cleverness and bravado, gigantic personalities who filled us with wonder, made us laugh, scared us to death and were gracious enough to actually dote on us. Our greatest fear was not to live up to their expectations.
There’s Nan, the Queen of Thanksgiving, over in the pantry wielding her trusty rolling pin, sculpting mince and pumpkin pies out of thin air, moving quickly from place to place, dispatching orders to her trusty subordinates, which would include everybody. In some kingdoms, a shiny tiara dictates regency; in Nan’s kitchen, you had flour in your hair. Her daughter, Marie, an eager trainee, was Princess of Stoves & Table Organization. Tom Killeen, her husband, was Official Greeter and Chairman of Alcohol, which existed in mind-boggling arrays and disappeared with amazing velocity.
The guests were many, with a core of hardened regulars and a sprinkling of those just passing through. Peripheral relatives might show up, true cousins and cousins in name only, recent widows, sad-eyed ladies of the lowlands just unmarried, pals down on their luck, anyone and everyone, really. If Nan got wind of someone without a place to go on Thanksgiving, she issued a summons. If they didn’t show up, she was off dragging them in by an ear.
Inevitable feature guests were the Heberts from around the corner on Dorchester Street. They went by the nicknames of Pie and Pay for reasons known only to God and family tree experts, and the two of them were as different as night and day. Pie, an obvious relative of Big Bird, was tall and skinny, loud and bawdy, and made an act of chasing whichever men showed up, particularly terrorizing the younger ones who had no experience in these matters. Meanwhile, the quieter Pay sat off in a corner, smiling and stoking his pipe, satisfied to engage in the conversation of the day. Pie was the first person I knew over 40 who was willing to take a few hits on a joint, a feat she celebrated with gusto, dismissing her critics as sissies and lording her edgy experience over the rest of the neighborhood. That Pie Hebert was going to end up in jail some day was an opinion universally held.
The Heberts had a daughter named Joanne, the occasional babysitter for myself and sister Alice when our parents went out on Saturday nights. Joanne was a rather large girl and it was necessary to stock the refrigerator before her arrival lest the lack of snacks lead to weak spells and heart palpitations which might render her useless. Joanne never had a boyfriend in her life until she suddenly married a failed prizefighter, a palooka named Clem Levine. Clem might have been a canvasback but he was not lacking in size. He came over one Thanksgiving with Pie and Pay and immediately displayed his affability by shaking hands with all the men, hugging all the women and pretending to box with the kids. Then, he sat down to drink. Clem took his drinking seriously and was touchy about the possibility that anyone could match him shot for shot. He made the grievous mistake, however, of taking on his mother-in-law, Pie, and eventually collapsed to the ground in a heap, shocking the children. “Okay,” said Pie, “Let’s get him up so I can drag him to the car.” We’re not sure but we don’t think the marriage lasted.
Our favorite relative was my grandmother’s brother, Uncle Arthur, an ex-Navy man, who was a professional sign-painter and lived in an upstairs apartment on nearby Union Street near the South Common. You knew if Arthur was taking care of you there would be things happening your parents needn’t find out about. “I’m taking the kids to the beach,” Uncle Art would report, neglecting to mention we would be be sampling all the forbidden rides at the beachside amusement park, going too far out in the ocean and eating a vast array of damaging foods. Arthur’s belief was that any meal you fed to a child under 12 was converted into positive flesh.
Arthur eventually found a wife named Rose, a dark Italian woman of high spirits, large red lips and loud voice, who loved him very much. If Rose was a car, she would operate almost always in Drive, seldom in Neutral and never in Park. Uncle Arthur and Rose fought a lot, spilled a mess of paint, cried about it, hugged and went on. Until one day, they didn’t. Rose told us she still loved Arthur, but got a divorce anyway. Us folks in Catholic Land were stunned, unused to this divorce business. Did you have to talk about it in Confession?
Not long after the settlement, Rose started coming back to Thanksgiving dinner, which we kids thought was perfectly acceptable behavior. The year after that, Uncle Arthur brought along a dour, cynical woman named Hazel. Hazel, who smiled only at night in the privacy of her own home, looked like a professional afterschool monitor for kids who had acted up in class that day. Rose and Hazel got into it and we were spared fisticuffs only by the intervention of Tom Killeen, who misspoke, “Ladies! Ladies!” and threw himself into the breach. Shortly afterwards, Arthur married Hazel and we never saw Rose again. We never saw Arthur much either, since he died soon after under suspicious circumstances. My grandmother swore he was poisoned by Hazel, whose previous husband had also bought the farm after a brief term together. If this sounds like a bad novel, just wait for the kicker. A mere two years later, Hazel was poisoned in her own home by an unknown assailant who left a ringing message in red lipstick on her bathroom mirror. “La vendetta e dolce!” the script announced. That means “Revenge is sweet!” in Italian.
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| The Queen and her faithful Court Jester, Bill, in The Days of Hair. |
You Can Go Home Again
The past of our childhoods is largely lost to us but we can still see a bit of it through an aging veil. If we travel to the place we call home, the colors behind the veil are brighter, if the house remains, brighter still. We approach the place cautiously, in wonder, both happy and sad for the emotions that set our hearts apace and nudge a lurking tear. Over there is where the table stood, chairs waiting, an impossible assemblage of manna piled atop. And there is the Queen of Thanksgiving beckoning one and all to come, find your places, sit, converse and be happy. The Queen will not sit because there is work to be done, plates to be rotated, glasses to be filled and updated. She summons her underlings and they rise in support and float across the room to fill their roles, Marie to the left, Tom to the right, circling, settling to dine, rising again at the behest of The Queen. There is laughter in the air, the banter of happy voices locked in friendship and harmony and great hopes and gratitude. The blossoming children at the kids’ table delight in the wonder of it all, delirious, certain Thanksgiving will forever be this way.
If you cock an ear, you can almost hear them, these gentle spirits, as they raise a glass to celebrate the day. Move a little closer, listen a little harder, close your eyes and bring back the sounds, the voices, the din of the day. These long-lost Ghosts of Thanksgiving are moving again, surveying the room, smiling at you, welcoming. Go to them now, quickly….reach out….look into their eyes….and remember.
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
