Flashback Friday

 

Can you believe it is November and still this nice? 

I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving. 

We are having our Thanksgiving dinner at school today, so that's our focus for this week's flashback.

I can remember Thanksgivings as a kid.  Mom always hosted the entire family and the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins would all come spend the day.  For the week before, lots of scrubbing and cleaning took place.  Lots of bitching and moaning took place, too.    But we all forgave Mom for that.

The crystal would be washed and dried so that it was sparkling.  

 

The china gleamed.

You could see yourself in the polished silver. 

 

The tablecloths would be starched and pressed. 

 

Butter would be placed on the table.

  

You'll never live that one down, Mom!

 

Pies would be baked.

 

320 pounds of potatoes would be peeled.  Usually by yours truly and Sister Two.  Sister Three never had to do anything because she was the baby of the family. But at least there are pictures of me.

I hate peeling potatoes.  I could never do it right, but boy, I sure had plenty of practice!  I never even ate any mashed potatoes.  I could never figure out why everyone got so excited about mashed potatoes.  We had them all the time, but we only had sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving.  Now there's something to get excited about!  That's my favorite part of Thanksgiving.

 

Wouldn't it be great to be able to spend one more holiday with Grandma Hall and Grandad Pipe?  Grandma looks like she'd been hitting the wine bottle, but I don't recall Mom serving wine at Thanksgiving.  It was always coffee, ice tea and ice water.

As soon as the meal was over, the cousins would all pour out of the house and either go play kickball at the local elementary school playground or else ride our bikes to the cemetary.  That only happened if the older cousins could ditch the younger kids.  We usually got in trouble for it, but it was always worth it!

So what are your favorite Thanksgiving memories?