Thanksgiving evokes memories of getting together for the day and enjoying a big meal, bringing our own "special dishes", and gathering around the table - set, in the olden-days, with Mommy's "good china", and holding hands while we say grace: "Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen."
It is a blissful scene of holiday and family-meal tranquility. It was not always thus.
Growing up, mealtimes were sometimes the scene of more dramatic interactions. With Grandpa, if all of us were home, there were 10 of us at the table. We fell to sitting in the same place for our meals.
Being the victim of many a swift-kick-of-justice dealt under the table by Linda, when we annoyed her, I learned to sit facing forward, while strategically positioning my legs to the side - frustrating her attempts to gain a satisfactory connection, until she would tell Herman, seated next to me, "Hit her!"
We were instructed to take some, and pass "the rest on" to the left - with no "short-stopping", or holding up the process of getting everyone served quickly and efficiently. Daddy liked meals and the family to be like the military, even to having to be dismissed from the table.
You must also clean your plate - our generation was often told about the "starving children in China" that would love to have food like we were getting (I would gladly have sent them the liver on my plate.)
Sunday mornings were a long, drawn-out process of trying to eat the Paul Bunyan-sized pancakes that Daddy would make for us. I didn't like them, but that never stopped him from putting a golden cake the size of the dinner plate in front of me. At first, I could wash it down with the orange juice, or chase each bite with a bite of sausage, but it was too big a task for one little kid. There I sat, trapped at the table - like Rapunzel in her tower waiting for her hair to grow - until I could clean my plate. Mommy would sometimes take a bite on her way past the table, just to speed up the process. Where were our dogs when I needed them?
We were not allowed to complain if we didn't like something, but were welcome to help ourselves to some bread and butter, instead.
Sometimes though, you were stuck with a less than desirable (a.k.a. "yucky") food item (rutabagas spring immediately to mind) on your plate which called for some inventive dispersal methods, i.e. wrapped in a napkin and shoved in your pocket or stuffed into the split in the vinyl cover of the dining room chairs or even temporarily deposited on the window sill behind you. Mommy loved to find these little tokens of our displeasure with her culinary fare tucked away in these clever hiding places, later.
Poor Mommy tried to make food that would please everyone. One time, she made a meal of Chinese food. We loved it, initially, but then everyone had nightmares. (I guess the MSG didn't agree with us.) My dream involved being attacked by "the Giant Claw" (a scary movie that I was not supposed to stay up to watch, but had done so anyway), and our taking refuge behind Daddy's green Chevy pickup truck.
She also had an entire repertoire of chicken recipes - chicken cacciatore, chicken a'la King, baked chicken, barbecue chicken, etc. - as chicken was cheaper than beef. "Chicken, again?"
As ours was a large family, invariably someone (you know who you are, Marty) would count the food items and announce something like, "Everyone can have two each." To which Mommy would admonish, "It's not polite to count." I used this to my advantage when accosted by the "counter" with, "How many of those have you eaten?!" I would simply retort, "It's not polite to count." (I guess that sort of thing was the reason Linda wanted to kick me.)
One time we had dinner guests, relatives who stopped by in their RV. Mommy served a lovely roast with all the trimmings. After the meal, we went outside to see them off. When we came back inside, the remainder of the roast was gone... and the butter was "licked flat". Apparently, this was the opportunity that Spinner (our cocker spaniel) had waited for! - climbing on the table and helping himself while no one was in the house.
As orderly as meals were when Daddy was there; they were chaotic when he wasn't. If you sat opposite the boys, you were open to becoming caught in the crossfire of "target practice", as they liked to "shoot" at the ducks on the huge picture on the wall with peas, or other projectile-worthy food items. Arguments and bickering would break out from time to time, and Mommy would say, "You kids make me lose my appetite!" (So, in a way, we were helping her retain her lovely figure.)
To let Daddy (stationed in Thailand) in on the "fun", Mommy secretly recorded our dinner-time antics. Janet gave it away when she began to say, "I got... I got.. a BABY!" (Earlier we had tried to get her to tell Daddy what she got for Christmas, and that was all she would say.) We looked up to the built-in cabinets and, sure enough, the reel to reel tape recorder was going with the red "record" button shining like a warning beacon.
If anyone got up from the table for any reason, you fell victim to "While your up... ". Some people would just lay-in-waiting for someone else to have reason to go back into the kitchen, so they wouldn't have to get up, themselves.
Friends were always welcome to join us for supper. Of course they would have to help with the chores involved in the mealtime preparations - setting the table, clearing the table, washing, drying and putting away the dishes, etc. Daddy always wanted us to be "happy" in our chores, urging us to sing while we washed the dishes. We made up a song, (to the tune of London Bridges) "Wash the dishes, pots and pans, pots and pans, pots and pans. Wash the dishes, pots and pans. My fair silverware." In the course of setting the table, if any food was dropped on the floor, or burnt, or otherwise rendered less-than-desirable, Mommy would say that she would eat the offensive item - another example of her selfless love and sacrifice for her family.
Josh Ellis, next door, was a frequent guest at the table, after many of the elder siblings had moved out. Every evening, as we began to eat supper, we would hear the squeal of the screen door spring and the door knob beginning to turn (he had long since given up knocking), and Daddy would call out, "Come on in, Josh." We'd get another plate for him (if we didn't already have one set, in anticipation of his arrival) and pass all of the food dishes his way. A growing boy, he ate supper at his home, as well.
Ours was no Norman Rockwell painting, but we were a family. We share warm memories of those times, and as we gather together, once again, we reminisce about growing up together and loving our family.
