Childhood Thanksgiving memories

Published 1:30 am Friday, November 28, 2025

I do get nostalgic this time of year. I can’t help it.

I spent 10 years in the United States Navy and I remember having to give up numerous holidays. I had a Thanksgiving dinner or two while at sea aboard the USS Saratoga (CV-60) aircraft carrier. I lived in Iceland for the better part of three years and celebrated the holidays with friends there. I worked in professional football and lived in California for 20 years. I spent plenty of holidays on the road, including a few Thanksgivings in Dallas. Maybe my experiences away from home have desensitized me to not being part of a large family gathering this time of year.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we do have seasons. It’s cold and wet and I love it. I grew up in western New York where we had four seasons. I always enjoyed traveling for work this time of year – places like Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Chicago were always a treat.

I grew up thinking my Aunt Carole’s (my father’s only sibling) house was out in the country. The drive out to Scottsville, New York, seemed to take forever. It was picturesque as we drove past the horse farms that lined the road. For some reason, I always took note of the rambling white fences that paralleled the road. As we approached the turn-off, empty fields and barns dotted the landscape. The topography, architecture, and open spaces cried country. Sometimes Dad would take the expressway, but I always preferred the scenic route.

The house had once belonged to my grandparents, whom I never knew. My father’s father died in 1959, and my grandmother passed away in 1966, three years before I was born. My grandmother bequeathed the house to her two children – my father and his sister. I don’t know the whole story (it’s really not important) but Dad didn’t want to live in the house, my aunt ended up with it and lived in it with her husband, my Uncle Freddy, for the better part of her life.

The driveway wasn’t paved. A basketball hoop that hadn’t felt the touch of a net in years (if ever) was loosely attached to the front of the rickety detached garage. There was well water. Eventually, a pack of the meanest shepherd mix dogs I’ve ever known took up residence in that garage and adjacent fenced-in yard. You had to walk up a small embankment to get to the well-worn path to the house. I say path because the sidewalk that led away from the house went straight out to the road and did nothing for you if you were coming from the driveway.

My parents and I would carry our dishes to the house, mostly my parents carried them, and I was lazy and couldn’t be bothered with such things as a child. Aside from pies, the only dish I remember Mom making was a sweet dressing made with prunes and apples. Mom made a great pie crust, however, her apple pie filling left a little to be desired. Apple pie filling isn’t supposed to be gray, is it? Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious, it just could have … looked better(?). My aunt made a great apple pie filling that looked like golden honey. One year Mom and Aunt Carole combined forces … oh, man, was that a pie. I am partial to apple pie. I hate pumpkin pie, absolutely hate it.

More on pie later.

We had a rather old-fashioned, misogynistic (almost chauvinistic) kind of Thanksgiving, my four first cousins and I. My aunt and her three daughters – Tammy, Debbie, and Shari – toiled in the kitchen with some help from Mom, as we menfolk settled in for a day of feasting and watching football. Aunt Carole would tend to the bird, which I am sure routinely tipped the scales at 22 pounds or more. Cousin Dave would arrive later after working much of the day. School friends, later boyfriends, and girlfriends, then husbands/wives, and kids would join us for dinner.

My father, my uncle, Dave (when he wasn’t working), my mom, and I (and later other invited guests), eagerly awaited the feasting while watching the Detroit Lions in their annual Thanksgiving matchup. It’s been a tradition for the Lions since 1934. The now unwatchable Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade had already been watched at one house or the other, or we would switch over to football in the middle of it. For whatever reason, I always rooted for the Lions no matter who they played. I still do.

I was a finicky eater as a child. And to this day, there are certain Thanksgiving staples I still don’t like. I won’t touch cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes (yams), or squash. Just give me turkey, mashed potatoes with butter, salad, soft fresh rolls, and Mom’s sweet dressing and I was a happy boy. David would pile his plate a mile high at least three times. My aunt’s army of at least a dozen cats circled like sharks while awaiting the leftovers.

Then there was pie. Apple. Mincemeat. Lemon meringue. Key Lime. Pumpkin. Oh boy, was there pie.

Eventually, we’d settle down and watch the Lions game, and maybe we’d catch some of the Dallas Cowboys game (while Uncle Freddy napped in an easy chair), and have more turkey or pie or both. I never knew the Cowboys game was much of a Thanksgiving tradition (it has been since 1966) – I would learn later that they were as much of a tradition as the Lions. My cousins and I sometimes ended the day with board games. If I was feeling adventurous, and the ground was covered with snow, I’d go sledding in the dark and careen through the scrub brush.

We’d have as few as eight or nine, and as many as darn near 20 for Thanksgiving dinner. As I got older, many of us took up smoking as a habit and we’d crowd on the enclosed porch (healthy) if it was too cold to smoke outside (I have since quit).

The house itself had a distinct aroma (like old furniture and books), it was charming in some parts, dilapidated in others. It always seemed to be organized chaos. It certainly had something after the wood-burning stove was installed in the living room (healthy). Sometimes it felt like a sauna, even in the dead of winter. If it got cold, my uncle would just throw another log on.

All four parents are gone now, they all passed away within a few years of each other in the mid-to-late-2000s. All that’s left of those Thanksgivings are memories. We didn’t take many photos of those events, despite my father’s shutterbug tendencies. I couldn’t find any pictures of Thanksgivings past in my collections. There could be slides somewhere.

We weren’t rich people – far from it. Lower middle class if I had to put us in a tax bracket. We certainly were not the embodiment of the Norman Rockwell painting. But we did it this way every year with very few exceptions. As I mentioned, I was in the Navy for 10 years, so I missed some. But when I did get back and attend, it was like I had never left.

Say what you want about what we did, how we did it, or how estranged we are now. These were our Thanksgivings. We enjoyed them and each other.

I reset the trip-o-meter in my car on a 1997 drive from my parents to my aunt’s house. I had to know how far it was. I had driven out there a few times on my own as an adult. I still thought of it as the “country.” As I got older, it became less and less rural and more and more suburban. To me, that’s the saddest part aside from the dissolution of the get-togethers altogether.

Nine miles. An online driving directions site says just over 13. Not quite over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house or somesuch. You know what? I’ll always remember it as a drive in the country to Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt’s house. Those fences and horse farms will always line the road, and that barn a few hundred yards from the corner will always signal the turn.

Those were our Thanksgivings and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I have to admit I miss them.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.