THANKSGIVING

We grew up in two adjacent towns in Southeastern Connecticut: New London and Waterford. True to their Southern New England location, Thanksgiving and its attendant celebration was a huge part of our cultural milieu.

Synagogues and churches each had special “Services” late in the morning to give thanks to God for His bounty. Although the story was more fiction than truth, we all knew the accepted version of the first Thanksgiving.

When we were growing up, Thanksgiving was a great day. After all, there were football games on TV as well as all the “giant monkey” films (King Kong, Son of Kong, Bride of Kong, Mighty Joe Young, King Kong Goes to Hollywood (Ok, that last one is a fake), etc.

Our house was always full on Turkey Day. Our mom always made two turkeys. Along with the turkeys, there was cranberry sauce (both jelled and whole berry), mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, sweet potatoes with carrots and cinnamon, potato salad, green salad, turkey soup, green beans with almond slivers, sweet potato pie, really good and fresh baked rye bread, some sort of a souffle, and desserts the likes of which we never saw at any other part of the year: pecan pie, pumpkin pie, pareve custard cream pie, brownies, cookies, fruit salad with coconut on top of it, and what ever else our invited guests brought along with them.

Dinner was early- usually at around 2:00pm, and ended at 4:00pm. At that point, the table was pushed along one wall of the dining room, and was reset as a buffet table with all the fixings for a whole afternoon and early evening of snacking, grazing, and stuffing. Oh yeah, we left out gravy up above! Gravy did not make it to the buffet table, because the buffet table was cold food only.

Father was, of course, a WW2 veteran, and he also worked in the defense industry. He designed the nuclear reactor on the first nuclear submarine, the SSN Nautilus. Our table included prayers of thanks for our veterans as well as motzi. As it was New England, we had to tell the Thanksgiving story and then say for what we were thankful.

No one wanted to be last on the “I am thankful for…” recitation. Being the last meant that everyone else had already said all the good stuff. We were not supposed to say something that someone else said.

All in all, it is good to give thanks unto the Lord!

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