Some Memories...

Bob called me last night and wondered why I hadn't been working on my "blog"! So I told him that I had thought about it several times but I really haven't been feeling too good and also, I have been trying to put more time into my "prayer" life!!!! You atually start thinking more about the "necessary" things when you get older and wonder how much more you can "remember"! So I was thinking about some of the Holidays that we used to enjoy and how we celebrated them. Of course, in my family, when we were where we could get to Church and all that was usually the way we started them out! Thanksgiving was always a big deal "family-wise" because we usually lived around a lot of Aunts, Uncles, cousins, to say nothing of the 10 children Mother and Dad had!!! Seemed like some of the first Thanksgivings I remember, Mother got up in the middle of the night and stuffed the turkey and put it in the oven!!! The whole house smelled so good when we woke up!!!! And another thing I remember was that even though Mother got up so early, it seemed like the turkey took it's own sweet time cooking!!! We always had a huge turkey and with that, Mother made the best dressing! It was probably because she used home-made bread that she had allowed to dry out just for thaat purpose! The right amount of spices, onions, celery, butter, (to keep it moist!) and she always cooked up the giblets, (liver, heart, etc. and, if she could get away with it, the neck! The broth from those were added to the dressing and the giblets were cut up small and added too. We always had mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, creamed peas, candied yams, (Ooh yummy!) apple and walnut salad, and fresh biscuits. Then the pumkin pie that was made the day before! Now it seems like people have a variety of pies, Chocolate, lemon, etc. And Grandma, (my mother always made her own mincemeat and made pies with it!!!! As we got older and got married, we had our own dinners, depending on where we lived!!! If we were around family these became quite the way to have dinner! And it was the custom for this one to bake the turkey one year and the next year someone else did that and it was the same with the other things. The apple salad, for instance, (Waldorf Salad) would be furnished by one family and the yams by someone else! Then when Mom and Dad moved into Torrance, California, we decided that we could rent a hall and it was usually the Y.M.C.A. and we would cook everything at home where so many lived in the area and then bring the meat and stick it into the ovens there and cook the rest of the dinner there. We had big long tables and we would fix everything and then bring it to the tables and then the real fun would start!!!! The reason we liked this hall particulaly was that it had a nice big yard and the men and boys could play football and the little ones always had a good time together! After dinner, there was a fireplace in the hall and we would make a fire, and then someone would ask me or someone else to play the piano and we would stand around and sing and then we would turn on our record players, etc. and those who wished could dance. Cappy and I usually started it out and before long the younger ones were dancing along with the older members of the family. The dish situation was taken care of because there was a big, old dishwasher in the kitchen and so it could pound away without bothering anybody. We always left the hall clean and so we could usually get it the next year!!!! These dinners were really fun and even though we saw the rest of the family often, it was still great to get together all at one time!!!! It usually broke up about 5:00 or 5:30! after everybody had taken what they wanted have for leftovers that night!! When we moved from there and of course, by this time, my Cappy had passed away, we moved up here to the Central part of the State and I can't begin to tell you the number of times that I had dinner with my sister Barbara and her family!!!! I cooked a couple of times and since at that time I had a big apt. I invited those who wanted to come, to my house!!!!! I miss all that in my old age!!!!! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who read my blog!!!!