A few fond Thanksgiving memories

First off, let me wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving. I hope it’s filled with some of my favorite F-words…family, friends, fun, food and football.

I had a different column topic in mind but thought I’d focus on Thanksgiving and some fond memories. As I write this, I have Christmas music playing in the background because, yes, I am one of those who puts their tree and decorations up in early November. My house, my rules. While I have always enjoyed Thanksgiving, I see it as a nice addition to the holiday season and not a holiday that gets an entire month. Now that I have lost several of you who don’t feel the same way, I’ll grab a glass of eggnog and continue.

Doing a quick search, I found that only about 16 countries celebrate Thanksgiving, with the United States leading the way, for obvious reasons.

The food is always a big draw on Turkey Day. It’s the one time of the year I’ll indulge in having green bean casserole, which I read is the same recipe the Pilgrims brought over. And while I’m not a fan of cranberry sauce, I won’t even try it if it’s in a bowl. It has to be a small plate, fully intact with the rings still around it from the can from which it came. You know, the way nature intended it.

A Thanksgiving tradition that seems long gone are the days of the true Black Friday shopping day. These days it’s all online or spread out over a week or two. I’ve never been one to partake when it was still a thing. But I know my aunt and cousins would get the newspaper Thanksgiving Day, which looked like a small log thanks to all the flyers inserted for Black Friday deals. They’d go through each and pick what they wanted to get for the kids and map the stores out to make their trip as efficient as possible.

There was one year that I did become a Black Friday shopper. My brother and his family were down here for Thanksgiving about a decade ago. I think it was Best Buy that had a real good deal on laptops, of which my brother wanted to buy for my sister-in-law.

After getting a few hours of sleep, I went by and picked him up since the store opened, I believe, around 5 a.m. We thought we got there early, but to our chagrin, the line stretched almost around the entire building. We thought about throwing in the proverbial towel but we decided to trudge ahead since we made the effort to get there.

I think we were a bit loopy, or punch-drunk as we called it, due to a lack of sleep. Because of that, everything made us laugh. To make a three-hour story short, the doors opened and the line began to move. We made it inside where there was a warm glow of electronics that greeted us. We hastily made our way to the laptops and needless to say, the ones on sale had long-since been plucked. A three-hour wait culminated in us being in the store for less than a minute. But in the end, we got some great and memorable brother time in and something we still laugh about today.

One of my fondest memories of Thanksgiving started years ago at my grandparents’ house and would carry over to when my sister started hosting Thanksgiving. There’s a numbered tile game called both Rummy-O and Rummikub. If you’ve ever played, you know it can be both frustrating (another Thanksgiving F-word) and lots of fun with plenty of laughs. Following dinner, as many as 10 of us would get the two sets out and play.

One of the things I remember most is that my grandmother and sister could look five moves ahead, while me, my grandpa and aunt were happy with simply having one move when it was our turn. It often made for lots of laughter and good times. Between games is when my grandma would famously ask every year, “Who wants pie?” Despite feeling like one of the Macy’s Day Parade floats we’d seen that morning, there was always room for pie.

Sadly, my grandparents and that aunt are no longer with us. So, I suppose today I give thanks to having those memories, which can live on within my mind and heart forever. I hope you all do the same, and save me a piece of pie.