I've been waiting for Dwight to come up with a Thanksgiving Memoir, but it hasn't happened yet, so I'll write about one Thanksgiving that I remember vividly. The day was beautiful and unseasonably warm. We all worked on the dinner, which included some foods that were seldom on our table - celery, red grapes, cranberries (cooked by Mother), and yams, plus the usual big hen baked to perfection in the coal range. (We had a turkey my senior year in high school, and all decided that it was not as delicious and moist as the chicken.) We cleaned up, dishes were finished, and with the day so beautiful and fine - blue skies, golden stubble in the fields, etc., so we older children decided to walk down to the river bridge. All I remember about that walk was that as we were headed home, dark clouds began to appear in the west, and we hurried down the lane to home to avoid a possible storm. One thing that Louise did was to save the embossed paper napkin she had for lunch (unsoiled), and color the patterns on it, so as in everything else, I copied her. Paper napkins were only used on special occasions.
Another Thanksgiving I remember was even earlier - around 1942. Aunt Cindy and Uncle Norman were living in the remains of the little house that Uncle Orville had built. There was a main room and a small back room. As I recall, they just had Newell, and we all crammed around the table in the front room. After lunch, Daddy and Norman went out and began to stake out the dimensions for our new home. Unbelievably, we moved into that house on George Washington's birthday in 1943! I spent another ten years in that home before graduating from high school and heading for Laramie.
