Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

​Thanksgiving was a family event back in the Seventies.  My grandma and grandpa Townsend had nine kids.  Each of those kids had at least two kids.  Most of them had four and five kids.  We’d all gather at my grandparents' house on Thanksgiving.


There was a ton of food on the table, but nothing really sticks out.  I don’t remember if we had turkey, dressing, ham, green bean, or peas.  I do know we had mashed potatoes since no meal was allowed to pass without potatoes in grandma’s house.


The one thing I do remember is pie.  There were lots of pie.  There was a table in the back room of the house that pies were placed upon as they were cooling.  There was pumpkin, apple, and cherry pie, but my favorite was black raspberry.  


In the summer, we’d pick the raspberries that the Rogers family hadn’t harvested yet.  My grandpa had several rivalries in the neighborhood for different things, but with the Rogers family, it was raspberries. If you wanted raspberries, you had to get up early and hit the Dormitory trails before they did. Raspberries collected in the summer were canned to become awesome pies at Thanksgiving.


We’d go to grandma’s house early so that mom, her sisters, and her nieces could help prepare the dinner.  The kids would retreat to the backroom.  There were no TVs in the room and cellphones hadn’t been invented yet.  You couldn’t flip on your gaming system or pull out your cellphone.  You had to talk to one another.  Those conversations in the backroom waiting on dinner to be ready are treasured memories.  


I don’t have many stories from those Thanksgiving dinners, but the feeling of family that I had back then was one of the best things in the world.  Your cousins were close family, and you spent time together.  They made fun of you, gave you bad advice, and got you in trouble once in a while, but Lord help the outsider who tried to treat you as bad as they did in their presence.


My grandparents were the glue that held our family together.  When they were gone, the ties we shared unraveled within a few years.  I miss that feeling of love and misery.  I’d give just about anything for a few moments of being teased and mistreated by my cousins.  Joey and his claw of death stomach lift.  Jeff and his six-inch punches. If you know, you know.  


Those days spent with family shaped who I am today.  I make fun of and mentally torture the people I care about.  The people I care about can see through the teasing just like I did in the back room of grandma’s house on Thanksgiving.


Happy Thanksgiving to my family and friends both old and new.

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