Food. Family. Football. Remember Thanksgiving past with us; share your own

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Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Yes, even all of you non-USA residents! And also yes, Mrs. Dunn (my HS grammar teacher) would be horrified by what I’ve just done in this paragraph.

Thanksgiving, like all holidays, has its traditions. We have the “Three F’s” on Thanksgiving. Food. Family. Football. It’s a time when we stop for a moment about what we are thankful for. It can be a joyous time. It can also be a painful time for many of us as well.

What I would like to do here today is to talk about those three F’s and how they relate to me in my life, and ask you to think about how they relate to you in your life in the comments below.

I’ll start first, and I’ll share three stories/times from my past that helped to shape me into the person I am today… for good or bad.

Thanksgiving 1967, Tachikawa, Japan

I was five years old, and I was very disoriented. My world had been turned upside down. I had gone from a life of playing in the sun, going to the television studio and filming my part of the show (I was Mr. Milkman on the syndicated version of Romper Room for a while)… to living in a country where everybody looked different, and I couldn’t speak the language.

Mentally, I knew something was coming before we left. The endless rounds of shots (unbuffered vaccinations for EVERYTHING on can catch in the far east) for the previous 4 months (four shots every Thursday) had scarred me for life about shots. Then dad left, and we would get letters from him telling us how he was setting up a place for us to live, getting us registered on base, in schools, getting a car, all the details of adult life.

We flew over on a flight that seemed to take forever, and when we got here Dad left again after a week. This time we weren’t going with him; he was at a place called DaNang in some country named Vietnam.

It had been two months, and I hadn’t seen him since. Mom was worried and she cried a lot, there was no TV only the radio and the movie theater on base. I slept on a mat that sat on the floor, and my room’s floor was made from woven grass. The walls of my room were made of paper.

Japan was a really strange place to my young mind. I did have school, but all the other kids were bigger and older (mom got me placed a year ahead of my age group somehow so I did first grade when I was 5). I wasn’t Mr. Milkman anymore.

Mom started talking about getting ready for Thanksgiving, and I got excited. I knew that the last show I filmed was a Thanksgiving special, and that it was “taped” to be shown then. I knew we couldn’t see it but I asked mom to tell my grandparents so they could watch it. I didn’t know she couldn’t just call them, that was overseas long distance, and we couldn’t afford it.

Thanksgiving Day arrived, and mom had outdone herself as she always did. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (to her chagrin canned, because there was no fresh to be had in Japan), and apple pie. It was our first year without dad being there. It wouldn’t be the last. I asked mom if the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins would all be eating at the same time as us, and she looked back at me wondering “How do I explain the International Date Line to a 5-year-old”. My older ‘middle’ smarty-pants sister, in that “you are too dumb to breath” voice she was the master of, said “It won’t be Thanksgiving Day for them until tomorrow.” Yup. This was weird.

There was no talk or even consideration of football. The Lions Thanksgiving game wouldn’t be played for another day our time.

Pittsfield, Illinois, 1980

Mother went all out to try to give us the best Thanksgiving dinner she could, even though times were desperate financially and we all knew that this was our last “celebration” in the house we had called home for the last six years. I was there, as were both of my sisters with their new husbands. We had all the usual food and fixings, and yet we all could feel that the thanks were forced again this year.

My father had run up a huge mound of debt and skipped town (he moved to the Philippines without telling anybody). The house was in foreclosure. I was in college working my way through without a dime from home because there just were no dimes to spare. There was no income, and way too much outgo, but we pressed on. Mom was a proud woman, and she knew somehow, some way she would recover.

After the meal, she shooed the “menfolk” out of the dining room, and we turned on the TV. I was looking forward to the game, because my beloved Chicago Bears were playing the Lions at the Silverdome.

And what a game it was. We were tied at the end of regulation 17-17. For the first time ever, a Thanksgiving Day game went to overtime (overtime only came into existence in the mid ‘70’s), and on the opening kickoff of OT, Bears running back Dave Williams caught the ball and the 5-yard-line and absolutely took it to the house. Thirteen seconds of glory, and a Bears win. You can see it on YouTube by clicking HERE!

I was able to forget our troubles as a family. For a little while.

Edina, Missouri, 1984

I stared around the room of my small apartment, more in wonder than anything else. I had graduated from College in May with a degree in journalism and had moved home with my mom as I was desperately searching for a job of any kind. Things had turned around for my mother, she now had a job that she loved (and held for the next 35 years). It didn’t pay great, but it paid… she was renting a house and starting to eek away at the mountain of debt that she had been stuck with (it took her 25 years to pay it off, but she paid it. Every. Single. Dime.)

I got the call for a job interview, as the editor of a weekly paper. The pay was horrible, but I was broke, I decided to take it despite having no money, no property and nothing to set myself up with.

I borrowed a 1975 Chrysler Newport and moved to Edina at the first of August. I arrived on a Tuesday with exactly $20.28 to last me until payday (which, fortunately, was Friday). For the first three months there, I lived in that Newport. Literally. Yes, I was one of the employed homeless you hear about. White collar job, sleeping in the back seat of a car, showering in a rigged-up device in the newspaper’s darkroom. I don’t recommend it.

Living in the car did allow me to save up enough money to get a cheap car of my own (a terrible 1975 Mustang II). I knew I had to get an apartment because 1) it was getting cold; 2) I needed to give the Chrysler back and 3) can you imagine somebody who is 6’3 trying to sleep in a Mustang II?

I got this little cheap three-room apartment in a “long-term-residence” hotel. It was furnished with a bad chair, an uncomfortable bed, a fridge that sounded like a 707 taking off at O’Hare… and it was heaven. I had running water. I had a shower. I had a toilet. I had an oven. I had an old, terrible console TV… but it had cable and I could watch the Bears on it.

I remember cooking myself a “TV Dinner” and eating it on a tray as I watched the Lions and Cowboys games. My girlfriend (now wife of 37 years) was at her home with her family, and my mom was working. I knew nobody but my 3 co-workers in town and they were with their families.

I was lonely. The TV Dinner was terrible. The chair was uncomfortable.

But.

I had electricity. I had running water. I had heat. I was just starting out. Good enough.

HOW ABOUT YOU?

Do you care to share any of your Thanksgiving stories/experiences?

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