Remembering Thanksgivings of the past (11/22/06)

When you get to be a certain age, every holiday provokes memories of the same holiday years before.

So it's inevitable that on Thanksgiving Day, I'll find myself remembering:

• A Thanksgiving afternoon in Portland when I was a kid and some of us had gone hiking through what was then the Johnny and Margaret Finch farm. One of my friends had a BB gun and shot at birds. Fortunately, he didn't hit any. The afternoon was raw and cold, and there were flurries of snow.

• A Thanksgiving with extended family in Dayton, Ohio, where one cousin's wife was heard to complain, "You Ronalds don't have conversations. You tells stories."

• A Thanksgiving dinner with extended family in Uncle Jim Luginbill's garage on Wayside Place in Portland. Typical of Jim, the garage floor was immaculate. It was the tidiest garage I've ever been in.

• That same Thanksgiving dinner when Connie had prepared the ham to accompany the traditional turkey. My father had teased her by remarking in a stage whisper to an aunt that the ham seemed "a little dry."

• A Thanksgiving dinner in Richmond with my parents when a few "strays" were added to the table. One was a woman who had recently been discharged from Richmond State Hospital, where she had been a patient and my mother was a volunteer. Another was a young client of my sister Linda, who is a child psychologist.

• Countless Thanksgiving afternoons watching the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins with my dad, assorted uncles, and a cast of cousins.

• A Thanksgiving when Jim Luginbill decided to provide a wine tasting to go with the turkey. He removed the labels and numbered each one. We were to taste them and rate them. They ranged from high-end vintages to bargain basement junk along with some of Jim's own home-made wine. One relative who was something of a wine snob ended up lavishing praise on what turned out to be Gallo Hearty Burgundy that sold for $3 a bottle.

• A Thanksgiving when the twins seemed to eat nothing more than Aunt Jean's rolls, mashed potatoes and whipped cream. You've heard of White Christmases? This was a White Thanksgiving.

• A Ronald family gathering for Thanksgiving in the 1950s in Richmond when the kids were all sent out in the afternoon to a movie matinee. The movie? "G.I. Blues" with Elvis himself. (One cousin was an Elvis fan and steered us to the movie she wanted to see.)

• A Thanksgiving in college when I'd gotten the worst haircut of my life in order to placate my father, who believed, of course, that it was still a little too long.

• More than one Thanksgiving when my brother-in-law Stephen insisted that we all watch his favorite movie, "Babes in Toyland" with Laurel and Hardy. (It was roughly on a par with "G.I. Blues.")

• Multiple Thanksgivings when there was a birthday cake as part of the dessert because my father, my Uncle Jim Ronald, and I all had November birthdays.

• A Thanksgiving at our house in Portland with both my parents and Connie's parents on hand. It would be my father's last. And it would be Connie's father's last normal Thanksgiving. A series of strokes the following summer left him seriously impaired.

• Sunny Thanksgiving afternoons when we walked off the meal with a hike down to the waterfall not far from my sister Linda's house in Richmond.

• Thanksgivings at the farm on Berry Road near Pompey, N.Y., where Connie's mother was raised and where her Aunt Sylvia still lives. That gathering required flying to New York, renting a car, and staying at a small hotel in Cazenovia. Logistically, it was a nightmare. But the warmth of family in that old farmhouse was hard to beat.

Much of Connie's family will gather at the farm again this year, while we plan to spend the day with my sisters in Richmond.

But wherever we are, we'll add to our store of Thanksgiving memories before the day is done.[[In-content Ad]]