Monday Meanderings - 11.27.2017

I'm well into a tryptophan-induced haze as I write this; that's what turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, green beans, sweet potatoes, Waldorf salad and a slice of pie will do to you. $11.49 at Luby's for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Pecan pie 75 cents extra.

Yep, we joined several hundred of our closest friends for our Thanksgiving meal again this year. No cooking, good food, no clean-up and thankfully no leftovers. Or more importantly, no siren calls from those delicious pies left on the counter, just begging for one more slice to be eaten, with a double scoop of ice cream, of course. One simply does not throw out un-eaten pie.

And we again thought of that very first Thanksgiving, just Barb and I in Abilene. We had invited some college students over - kids who lived too far away to go home for the holiday. From somewhere, we had received a cooking tip about putting the turkey in a brown paper bag before cooking. Sounded good, so we got up at the crack of dawn to start that process, tucked the bagged bird in the oven, and went back to bed.

It wasn't too long before we woke to a house full of smoke and a turkey bag burned down to the juice line! We don't know what we did wrong - let the bag touch the oven, or something, In the mean time we have a scalding-hot, ash-covered, partially-cooked turkey to deal with, and guests on the way. We salvaged dinner, as I recall. Thankfully college students aren't picky, and it ended well. At least that's our recollection, and I'm going to stay with that version.

If you read blogs, I  recommend Sean of the South to you. Sean Dietrich is a columnist, and novelist, known for his commentary on life in the American South. Here's a bit of his biography:

"As a child, I liked to write. I filled up notebooks with tales of the high-seas, shameless vixens, and steamy scenarios combining both of the aforementioned. My fifth grade teacher found one of my notebooks and scanned through it. She told me I wrote with too many commas, and encouraged me to pursue a career in construction work.

That, old, woman, never, liked, me.

Years later, I learned my teacher had left the school. She took a job at the Piggly Wiggly as a cashier. I went to visit the old girl, to show her the man I’d grown into. She seemed genuinely glad to see me. And I was just as glad to find her wearing that red apron for a living.

After visiting for a few minutes, I realized something I’d never noticed before. Beneath her hardshell exterior was a regular lady, working from nine to five for pennies. She was doing the best she could with her life. Just like me.

Before I left, she asked me what kind of work I did.

At the time, I worked in construction."