Thanksgiving Day

In a few days family and friends will gather around the table to share the Thanksgiving meal. The Thanksgiving meal a tradition of Americans since John Smith met Pocahontas and asked her to dinner. Over the years we ingenious Americans have come up with a variety of ways to cook the turkey and I must say most are pretty darn tasty. My mom would stuff and roast the bird in the oven for what seemed half a day before we could slice and eat him. We now deep fry him, which I find rather delectable and of late I have heard about cooking the large creature in a garbage can. Yes, you read the sentence correctly the garbage can; similar to a beer can chicken. Now there are a variety of ways to flavor a turkey. You may want to baste him in oils and butter the old fashion way or perhaps get exotic and use flavoring such as bourbon or whisky to give that ole bird a punch. I have never had a bourbon basted turkey but something tells me that would be an excellent way to serve the ole boy at a family gathering. Either way, if cooked properly it would be pleasing to the taste, if you like turkey. Ham is a favorite at the meal also, but the turkey is always the favorite main dish. After such a gathering around the table it is always a good idea to find a spot on the couch or in a comfortable chair. If your family is similar to mine between the favorite stories of when we were growing up and what we did as kids and the heavy dose of L-Tryptophan, you will need a place to rest. We always turned on the football game and playing was the Detroit Lions and whoever, live from the Silver Dome in Michigan. Can Detroit even afford the light bill at the dome nowadays or much less a football team, but that’s story for another day. Usually within fifteen minutes or so everyone is asleep and no one cares who is playing who or what the politicians in Washington are up to. Yes Thanksgiving is a time to spend with family and friends.

 

In years past, we went Quail hunting in the morning on Thanksgiving. We hunted till about 12:00 returning to the house to occupy our place at the sacred table for the meal. Undressing from the leathers and heavy boots, we looked like real hunters, similar to the ones that helped gather the prey for the first thanksgiving meal. Shotguns unloaded and sitting beside the door on the porch, we dragged in searching for nourishment to enable us to return to the field that afternoon to pursue our quest of the popular Bobwhite Quail. Now if you have never had deep fried Quail then you have missed a delicacy. The little bird has a taste that will leave you wanting to send your men and boys back out the next weekend to dilute the population for another meal. I must say at this time, when munching on the little creature you have to be extra careful, sometimes you find that little ball of buckshot that may not have been recovered when cleaning and dressing the bird for frying. The effects of encountering this little piece of lead are reminiscent to biting on a large un-popped cornel of popcorn. The feeling of a trip to the dentist and the cost it will incur makes the meal less desirable, but hey everything good has a cost right? At the end of the day when darkness falls and the hunters are too tired to continue because of lack of energy and the fact you can’t hunt quail at night, they return for one more trip to the table to clean up the bird and the dressing from the noon time meal. The pumpkin and pecan pie are usually gone and as the tired hunters return to the living room, they undo their belt and open the top button on their pants and sit only to reminisce of the long day in the woods.

 Only in the great US of A can the women clean up the kitchen and make a mad dash to the shopping malls after the Thanksgiving meal to start the Christmas shopping season. The bargain hunting starts immediately; almost as if an alarm clock sounds and every avid shopper hears it and responds. They all make mad rushes into department stores and electronic stores to grab the early bargains of the season. Growing up and working retail, Christmas decoration, music and the seasonal bargain hunting did not start till after the day of thanks. Today, Christmas is put into the stores before the witch at Halloween can adorn her black attire and fly in on her broomstick. I love watching the news after Black Friday’s day of confusion to see which store had the most eruption of violent shoppers grabbing that last Barbie doll or IPod or whatever item someone wanted that someone couldn’t get first. Our previous day of thanks is totally thrown out the door and it is every man or women for themselves. As for me I am going to once again do the manly thing when it to comes to shopping and wait until Christmas Eve and run out and buy my presents when the stores are less likely to be busy and the bargains are really bargains.

 

As we get closer to the season and the day we gather to give thanks for the blessings that have been bestowed upon us by our creator, I hope we will all remember that freedom is not free and the blessings we enjoy are given us as a gift from the Almighty God. There are people in faraway lands keeping watch so we can continue to enjoy days such as Thanksgiving and Christmas that will not be able to share the table with their family and friends. Be thankful of what you have and remember that even though we have troubles in our own country, it is still the freest and best place in the world to live. Have a blessed Thanksgiving and Christmas season.

 

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