I love this time of year and can recall the joy I felt at Thanksgiving time with my family at our home in Sacramento. We would have what we called “mom’s side of the family” join us. There would be grandparents, aunts and uncle and cousins coming in from San Francisco, Rio Vista, Gilroy, and Kokeel, Oregon to spend three of four days spread out at our three-bedroom home on 51st and T. It was great!
Other years we would have my “father’s side of the family” join us. Most of them lived in Sacramento so it was never an overnight event, but just as much fun. There would be more food then I could ever imagine. Roasted turkey, carved by my father, mash potatoes, turkey dressing, a variety of vegetables all this followed by pumpkin and mince pies covered in whipped cream. In addition there was upside down applesauce cake for desert. Each car that would show up with aunts and uncles and cousins would include some delicacy they had agreed to bring. I recall laying on the floor after the feast convinced my belly was about to burst and not caring at all – so delicious, it was worth the pain.
The conversation among the male adults would include who was driving the best-made car. My father liked Mercury’s and called my Uncle’s GM care a “bucket of bolts.” This could go on for hours and they would go outside to the driveway and walk around their cars and into our garage to see our Mercury. They’d lift the hoods and check the motors and open the doors to examine the upholstery and talk about it as though they were judging some great event. No one convinced any one else that they should go out a buy a different make or model. In the end they would laugh and laugh and one of them would ask, “how do you think the President is doing?” and the next round would move to a political give and take.
Two things mattered most in our family and they were religion and politics. We were what are now called Evangelical Christians (ECs) and on my mother’s side I had a grandfather and two uncles who were EC ministers and staunchly Republican. On my father’s side I had two uncles, and their families were Catholic and Democrats. When we were with them, the after dinner conversation were limited to car talk and politics so when the ultimate question was ask about the President, things would start out with light banter about how the President was doing.
Early on I recall conversations about President Truman and the ending of WWII and how the country was doing with “the boys coming home from Europe and the Pacific.” The Republicans would say “Truman didn’t have clue about how to govern and will probably do no good in the end.” The Dems would respond they the Repubs didn’t know what they were talking about and the country needed to give Harry a chance to lead us to where we needed to go.” When ‘Ike’ was elected in 1952 the Repubs were convinced it was “the Will of God that we have a great man like President Eisenhower in the White House.” I loved it, and every once in a while would say a would or two which would cause the adults to stop talking and stare at me as if to say, “hey pep squeak, who invited you into this conversation?” It was those conversations that introduced me to the love of politics that became the underpinnings for a good part of my life’s work and I am deeply grateful for those times in my life.
Thanksgiving matters to me because its a time when we can come together and enjoy all the things that matter to us as a family and think about the good things of life like political arguments with neighbors and friends and the faces we see at the grocery stores or barbershops and salons and gas stations. It is the repetitive interactions of daily living that enhances us the most. I love it here and look forward to many, many more Thanksgivings in Sonoma.
Be First to Comment