Pickleville Philosopher

Holiday Memories

By Jim Stone, The Pickleville Philosopher

To me being thankful started when I was just a little boy.  I was living with my grandmother.  She had been through the depression and some really lean times in her life with the way the world was back then.

It was Thanksgiving and we were all hungry, looking forward to eating to our hearts content. Well, me and my sister Susie Stone started to look around to see what was in the cupboards and cabinets that grandma was going to prepare. There was like nothing that looked good.

Grandma came in to the kitchen and asked us kids to go do our chores and go play.  She said Thanksgiving supper would be ready by three o’clock sharp .   Me and Susie asked her what are we going to have.   There was not much food in the house.  

Grandma sat us down and wanted to tell us kids about the days in the depression when her and granddad had nothing to eat the day before Thanksgiving so they could have a nice meal on Thanksgiving day.   They had 2 potatoes, a handful of carrots, some old dried up corn and a small bag of flour.

“And Jim we were thankful to have every single speck of it,” she said.

Grandma said it was late and a very bad storm had set in; you couldn’t even see out the front room windows.  "We were hungry and sitting together under the blankets when we heard a bang, bang, bang on what we thought was the front door."

“Your grandad went to answer the door and no one was there, but what was there were two dead Canada geese that couldn’t fly and navigate in the bad storm.  It was a blessing that to this day I see so vividly, all the sudden we had not only a grand Thanksgiving, we had food for days.  We both felt bad that the geese lost their lives,”  she said.

“You kids that’s when we were the most thankful  we’ve ever been.  You kids have it easy compared to how we had it back in those days.  Now go do what I told you and supper at 3.”

Susie and I went out and sat on the porch for a minute.  All we herd was clickity clank bang, bang, boom, boom, it was a lot of commotion going on with grandma in the kitchen.

“Susie did you believe grandma’s story about the geese flying into the house,” I asked.   She said, “I do.” I said I did too.

Well we got our chores done and headed home.  Before we got to the kitchen we could smell fresh bread, steamed vegetables and a giant turkey with all the trimmings that we couldn’t find earlier when we thought there was gonna be no Thanksgiving.

We were both speechless.  We never said a word to grandma but to this day that’s where I became thankful for what we had been blessed with.

Also to me, maybe not only being thankful but giving to others, kinda like the geese flying into the house giving their lives up on the night before Thanksgiving .