Being thankful for Thanksgiving memories

We Americans are certainly blessed. We need to reflect on how blessed we are as a nation and people at this time of year, especially those of us home for Thanksgiving with a place to be or a place to go and food on the table.

There are those who will not be home (I especially remember the military and those civilians that support them at war overseas this Thanksgiving of 2009).

There are plenty of us stateside, too, with no one with whom they can be, no place to go, and even those of us with no prospects for food on the table.

Even in the midst of hard times, though, often we can rely on our memories to help sustain us. So maybe the saddest thing is that there are those with no fond memories of Thanksgiving — memories of steamy kitchen windows, tables laden with food, rooms ripe with friendly conversation, and homes filled with the earthy fragrance of crackling fireplaces.

I’m one of the lucky ones with memories like these. Memories of Thanksgiving are some of my favorite memories of growing up in northeastern Ohio.

Gramps didn’t shovel the snow off his asphalt driveway at 20 Harrison Street off Broadway Avenue in Bedford, Ohio. About a half hour before we arrived, Gramps would back his Ford Thunderbird — replete with snow chains — up and down the driveway to pack down the snow into tire channels so we could make it up his driveway for Thanksgiving supper.

Even in a hard Thanksgiving Day snowfall that continued through the time we arrived, the packed-down tire tracks were just enough to ensure that no shoveling was required, as long as Dad followed the tracks up to the back porch. Once or twice I recollect Dad being stuck getting up Gramps’ driveway because his tracking skills were less than desired that particular day.

Thanksgiving was secret kitchen window day at my grandparents’ home. As Dad revved his slot car, fishtailing up Gramps’ driveway, we would slide to a stop just below Grandma’s kitchen widows fogged so thick with condensation from all the cooking activities that it was impossible to see inside.

I would rush to be the first out of the car, but then carefully place my small shoes into the large, booted snow prints of my grandfather and take giant steps safely to the only area Gramps shoveled: the steps leading to the back porch.

Stomping the snow off my shoes, I’d enter the back porch directly into a blast of steamy heat from Grandma’s kitchen.

I have vivid memories of Grandma in her full apron hovering over the massive General Electric stove with the built-in pressure cooker, stirring her bubbling, pink applesauce. Grandma would give us a wave and smile as we came in from the cold, but she had too much work to do to spend time hugging, at least for now.

The applesauce would burn to the bottom of the pot if not constantly stirred. Hot, spicy, pink applesauce — colored and sweetened with candy red hots — was made to go with turkey. It created that wonderful salty-sweet combination of flavors. Her applesauce is one of my fondest Thanksgiving memories.

These Thanksgiving memories come from the early 1960s when I was about 10 years old. In the early 1960s, we children were more seen than heard compared to today’s kids. I’m confident, though, our grandparents thought we were overly precocious, too rambunctious, and much too free with our opinions. And we probably were, compared to what the expectations were of Grandma and Grandpa’s own children — our parents — when they were growing up.

I remember busy, noisy rooms of adult conversation after we arrived for Thanksgiving supper to which I had little, if any, input and even less understanding. Nonetheless, as I looked up at Dad , Grandpa, and great Uncle Hill talking about politics in the living room next to the roaring fireplace (Grandma, Mom and great Aunt Luella were still in the kitchen making final feast preparations), I remember feeling a sense of familiar comfort surrounding me like a warm blanket.

The spicy fragrance of cinnamon mixed with earthy smells of the fireplace and aroma of roasting turkey made for instant hunger pangs. The warmth in Grandma and Grandpa’s house — the familiarity of the adults and their conversations — transcended the heat from the fireplace. It was more than a house. It was home.

Try as I might, I can’t quite recreate the same feelings in my own Thanksgiving traditions as an adult with my own children and grandchildren. It is said one can never go back.

But my memories do, in fact, take me back to Thanksgiving Day in Bedford, Ohio in 1963, blessed memories that I wish all Americans could share.

Barry Fetzer is a retired Marine whose column appears here every other week. He can be reached at fetzerab@ec.rr.com.