When we were kids, the main things we were grateful for on Thanksgiving were the long weekend, exceptional food, the influx of friends and family who arrived from out of the clouds once a year, and football. Some things never change, although the family and friends list seems to get irksomely shorter each year. No need for the table wings this time, Dad, Aunt Sally just took a trip on that old gospel ship and went sailing far over the sea.
The years pass and things change. Best friends move away, starter romances explode, the pressure to excel in school rises and the nasty little dumptruck of Cynicism slows as it passes your door. Through it all, however, Thanksgiving stands like a rock, a church steeple on a tall hill, impregnable, eternal, a warm beacon promising joy, calling you home. Frazzled hordes battle through airports, drive hundreds of miles, hitchhike across deserts, spend their last dollar to follow that light. “We’ll be home for Thanksgiving, Mom,” is more than a casual signoff, it’s a promise, a formal vow, a compact that can’t be broken under penalty of heartbreak and tears.
You remember Thanksgivings past, some of them clear as a bell. Your grandmother making pies from scratch. Your father pouring the good stuff. The table, decorous and full. The eruptions of laughter, the dotty aunts trying to kiss shying children, tossing the football in the back yard, winning the drumstick lottery. Despite the distance, I traveled home from Oklahoma to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving during my first year of college. My Mother and Grandmother picked me up at a bus station, making fun of the big black Stetson I latched onto in Stillwater. A year later, our fraternity cook, Sally, took pity and invited three of us homesick Northerners to her modest abode for the big day, my first introduction to life in a Black home. A few years later, busted flat in Austin, I was invited to Gilbert Shelton’s cozy house in College Station, where his dad ran a Firestone store and everyone but Gilbert was a buttoned-down straight arrow. There are all kinds of Thanksgivings, almost none of them bad, and some of them far from traditional. Enter Queenie.
Queenie
Are you alone on Thanksgiving…immersed in sadness and self-pity, wondering why you, of all people, have been seduced and abandoned by life? Are old black men writing blues songs about you? Is some vague charitable organization delivering a boxed turkey-day dinner to your pitiful vestibule? Buck up, Bunkie, and take a look around you…unknown adventures may be at hand. There is magic at work on Thanksgiving Day, you’ve but to find it.
On one unpromising Gainesville Thanksgiving, a friend asked me to keep an eye on his house visitor named Queenie, since the friend would be going home for the day. The town being empty and me between wives at the time, I figured why not? I picked up Queenie at ten in the morning and we headed for St. Augustine for an alternate celebration of the day, no plans, catch-as-catch-can. I figured we’d grab some fast food on the way but was astonished to discover that McDonald’s actually closed at least one day each year. The antithesis of Thanksgiving dining has to be stale ham and cheese on white bread sandwiches from a grubby 7-11, but it was either that or eating dirt. I assured Queenie I was usually a better planner. “This is more fun,” she laughed.
We strolled down St. George Street like every St. A. visitor does, finding most of the shops open and busy, then drove across the Bridge of Lions to Anastasia Island. Queenie was enthralled by everything she saw, a perfect companion. The beach was quiet and uncrowded, the water was primo and without fins. We hung around for about an hour, then drove south to Daytona, hopeful we’d find a hotel room at one of the busiest times of the year. Always an optimist, I drove straight to the biggest and fanciest place in town….you might remember it…. the one with the tunnel that went beneath the hotel straight to the beach. Like magic, the desk got a room cancellation just as we arrived. Better yet, they’d have a traditional Thanksgiving meal in the restaurant later that night if we’d like to be placed on the waiting list. Sure we would, and, of course, a space became available because nothing could go wrong this day.
After a couple of drinks before dinner, we found ourselves rambling through the lobby in a festive mood when we ran across an older couple in distress. They’d just flown in and taxied to the wrong hotel (ours) which no longer had any rooms. They’d lost the paperwork for the place they were supposed to be staying and had no idea what or where it was. The woman was in tears sitting on a sofa and her confused husband was lost at sea. Being in a gregarious state of mind, we went to the rescue, getting the concierge to phone around for a room somewhere, inviting them to our dinner table and then chauffeuring them to their new digs. They rewarded us with appreciation and delightful conversation at dinner. If I had been with the Stone Maiden of Burma, the rest of the night would have gone exceedingly well after that, and Queenie was not the Stone Maiden of Burma.
There are all kinds of magical Thanksgiving Days. For richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, at home or away, alone or in tandem, it never fails to deliver the goods. Wherever and however you are now, have a happy Thanksgiving. And if you’d like someone to talk to, my email is at the bottom of the page and I’m open for business. Salud!
Whomp! There It Is.
The image in the windshield is enormous, frightening and two inches from your face, then all hell breaks loose. Your ears are assaulted by a cacophony of a thousand banshees screaming in the night, your nose invaded by the searing smells of erupting volcanoes, your vision clouded by smoke and atomic particles of once useful automobile parts flying through the air. A determined airbag, set loose after years of imprisonment, drives your head back, another slams your right arm into your chest. Terrified blood from your innards blindly seeks shelter in the shadowy depths of your bladder. And then, like nothing even happened, it is quiet as death. The shitstorm has come and gone in a flash and left you smashed and at sea. This is a job for a superhero named Adrenaline who arrives like a bolt from the blue, temporarily assuaging injuries and raising hopes. You settle yourself, move your legs, grind the car door open and get out. Somehow, despite an attack from the Hammers of Hell, you are still alive and functioning. It’s a great day for the Irish.
A solid citizen, witness to the cataclysm, stops traffic, summons help on his cell phone, begs the driver of the pickup which crushed you to stay with him. Firetrucks arrive, ambulances careen into view, medics roll stretchers forward. Your wife, having been alerted by your cell phone, can be heard asking questions on the speaker from the accordionized remnants of your car. You walk over and answer; she’s on her way. The witness says he saw it all and tells you the errant pickup barely avoided a semi just down the road. Firemen and medics hoist the barely conscious driver from the wreck and slide him into an ambulance. He protests, thinks he’ll be okay if he sits awhile. He later undergoes surgery at Shands and survives.
Ten hours later you’re released grudgingly from the hospital with instructions for a follow up visit in four days. You sleep off and on, your right arm now remindful of Igor’s in the Frankenstein films. Dreams flutter in an out and finally a visit from the Cosmic Arranger. Embarrassed, he floats a weak excuse; “The Reaper we sent was a new rider, inexperienced in sealing the deal. He was supposed to bring us two heads and got none, but a nice try on the other guy. Don’t get cocky, we’ll be back.”
You smirk at the rhetoric from an old enemy. “You’re losing your fastball, pal. Too much time in saloons and retirement homes. Maybe a little rehab would help. In any case, next time don’t send a boy to do a man’s job. And try to stay away from football season, if you don’t mind.”
John Prine said it best, as he always does:
One day you’re up, and the next you’re down;
It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown,
That’s the way that the world goes ‘round.”
Hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving. We sure will.
That’s all, folks….
