All the trimmings

Most baby boomers, I suppose, must have thought – at least from time to time – that their family fell short of the mark back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

With perfect icons like Robert Young (“Father Knows Best”), Donna Reed (“The Donna Reed Show), Opie Taylor (“The Andy Griffith Show”) and Gloria Winters (Penny of “Sky King) it was easy to wish one’s family had a father, mother, son and daughter that lived up to the television legends.

Even our pets couldn’t compete with Lassie, Cheetah and my friend Flicka – not to mention Ed, the talking horse or Cleo, the talking dog of “The People’s Choice.”

We certainly couldn’t solve major problems in a half hour (with three commercial breaks) and we most definitely weren’t always so … well … so darned NICE as the television families.

But, when it came to Thanksgiving, I think my own family did a bang-up job. I have very fond memories of that holiday. The sense of tradition was very strong – I suspect that ancestors going back generations also had very positive Turkey Day memories.

Looking back, the string of near-perfect Thanksgiving celebrations lasted only a decade. Of course, a decade in the life of a 10-year-old is a long, long time.

Attempting to analyze the experience, I can come up with several elements that contributed to the perfect-ness. Of course there are more, but each of these made the celebration more memorable for me. I’ll discuss just two here.

First, of course, was the food. We were not an all-you-can-eat kind of family. Portions of just about everything we ate were issued to us – there wasn’t usually any passing bowls around and serving oneself. We never went hungry, but we also seldom got all we wanted.

At Thanksgiving, food was plentiful – and nobody seemed to care or even notice how much we heaped on our plates. Best of all, the food was wonderful. Turkey, stuffing mashed potatoes, succotash, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and salad were all available in mass quantities.

We also had crudités in the form of celery and carrot sticks and even little sweet pickles and olives – treats not seen at other times of the year.

Ah, yes! The food was a big part of the mix – especially as I entered adolescence and my appetite grew.

The second most memorable and essential element for a great family Thanksgiving was the people. I suppose most families sort of go one way or the other when it comes to grandparents. In our case, the grandparents on hand were maternal. My other grandfather died when we kids were quite young and Grandma Burke lived in Kansas.

So, it was the Whitacre branch of the family tree that gathered at Thanksgiving (and again at Christmas) each year. Mom had just one brother and, like her parents, he and his family followed us to San Diego in the late ‘50s. Rounding out the guest list were two women who would have been great supporting characters in any play.

They were also on the Whitacre side of the family – perhaps cousins removed a time or two. They were retired sisters who lived together in a retirement community near Los Angeles. They were Marguerite and Glenva.

Marguerite and Glenva! The fit together so perfectly in my mind. Two women who, from a boy’s perspective, couldn’t have been more different.

Marguerite was a talker. And she was an expert on the third degree. Sitting beside her at Thanksgiving meant having to respond to barrage after barrage of questions and comments about one’s answers.

Glenva, on the other hand, never seemed to speak unless spoken to. To me, she seemed to be entirely in Marguerite’s shadow – one of the few humans on earth capable of listening to as much as her sister had to say…

I wish I could spend some time with these two ladies today – with my new understanding of people of a certain age. I’m certain they had a lot to say – both of them; and I’m now interested. But then, I was not.


Then there were the more immediate relatives. We saw little of our cousins other than during the holidays. They were our opposite – two boys and a girl to our boy and two girls. The youngest was a brat, of course. These were always last to arrive and were considered chronically tardy.

Politics was briefly discussed each year – just enough to verify that the family was split. The grandparents were more Republican and conservative, the Burkes were more Democrat and liberal and the younger Whitacres weren’t very interested but seemed to side with the oldsters.

The decade in question happened to be filled with Richard Nixon news. He was vice-president at the start, lost a bid to become president and governor of California and then was resurrected and became president at the end. Through it all – and even beyond, after RMN resigned the presidency in disgrace – my grandfather remained a fervid Nixonian.

OOOOPS!!!

(NOTE: When I began this piece, I thought I had a fairly clear idea of what I’d be saying – a not-particularly complex and not-particularly profound essay about an annual event that was essentially pretty straightforward.

Upon reflection …. I’m becoming convinced [even as I’ve been writing this] that Thanksgiving, like families themselves, are actually quite complex. In fact, I wonder whether a study of a family’s behavior during this holiday might be the best way to gain understanding of that family as an organism.)

Not promising to wrap things up, I’m nonetheless going to end this piece with the intention of providing more thoughts on Thanksgiving in tomorrow’s blog entry.


We don't have to like each other. We're family. (Claudia)
Well, that was absurd, let's eat dead bird! (Tommy)
Nobody means what they say on Thanksgiving, Mom. You know that. That's what the day's supposed to be all about, right? Torture. (Claudia)
Where ya been? We ate already. (Tommy)
        -- “Home for the Holidays,” 1995