Thanksgiving is the same from year to year, but the memories are ever-changing

Recalling a Thanksgiving dinner while stranded in a small Arizona town

Those of us who type for a living are not especially fond of Thanksgiving.

Not that we don’t believe in giving thanks.

Back in the days when I produced copy on my manual typewriter, I was thankful for the little bell that would reward me every time I came up with just a single line of copy. That simple sound was encouragement enough to attempt to write another line and then another. Pretty soon, you had a whole column and could give your fingertips a rest.

Now, in the day of laptops and emails and instant electronic gratification, that charming little bell has been silenced. I can’t tell you how much I miss it.

The problem with Thanksgiving is that it’s an incredibly repetitive holiday that never changes. In fact, it’s all about repetition. I mean, try serving something other than turkey on this sacred day and see how those gathered around the dinner table will react.

Columnists face similar problems when trying to find a new angle on Christmas, Fourth of July, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Groundhog Day.

While you may be very good on your first stab at any of the above, you’re destined to go quickly downhill in subsequent years.

It’s best to come up with a classic on your first attempt, then simply repeat it every year without apology.

I wonder what the guy who came up with “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” wrote about the next year.

Yes, Virginia, this is the same Christmas column I wrote last year and will repeat every year until the day I die.

Long ago I wrote a Thanksgiving column about the desire of my two oldest children, then aged 6 and 4, to have Thanksgiving dinner at the old Straw Hat Pizza Parlor on G Street.

I patiently explained to them that eating at Straw Hat on Thanksgiving Day is a mortal sin. I think we ended up at Jack in the Box instead.

Way back in 1979 I wrote a column explaining what I did on Thanksgiving in 1955 that involved a backyard football game with kids from the neighborhood, but inevitably ended up with the consumption of turkey.

Speaking of which, give me dark meat or give me death.

Why I picked 1955 I don’t know, but every writer likes to romanticize about his childhood where exaggeration is not only allowed, but actively encouraged.

“It was literally raining cats and dogs during that backyard football game and the mud on the field came all the way up to our knees. Dave Whitmire scored twenty-two touchdowns because nobody was able to tackle him.”

Then there was the Thanksgiving in 1966 when I flew to El Paso on the Wednesday before the big day to meet my two older sisters, Mary and JoJo, who had just graduated from college and were returning home from spending the summer and early fall working a variety of temporary jobs on the East Coast.

They had hooked up with some fly-by-night car transport firm that hired them to deliver a used vehicle from Rhode Island to San Diego. I barely had enough leg room in the well-worn back seat.

We left El Paso early on Thanksgiving morning, heading west with visions of a turkey-and-dressing dinner at some fine establishment in Tucson.

Late that afternoon, however, this kidnapped used car sputtered and died alongside a two-lane road outside Benson, Arizona, 46 miles short of our dinner date in Tucson.

No cell phones, of course, and no knowledge of how cars actually work among the three of us.

My sisters had me hide behind a giant Saguaro cactus while they stood on the side of the roadway and tried to thumb a ride into Benson. After all, who could pass up two damsels in distress as darkness was closing in on Thanksgiving Day?

A ride eventually came and off they went into town as I wondered if I’d ever see them again. I also wondered if that constant hissing I heard might possibly be a rattlesnake.

As the desert began to chill, I saw a white tow truck approaching with my sisters jammed into the front seat with a burly driver who looked like he could have played linebacker at the University of Arizona.

While my sisters remained in the tow truck for the ride back into Benson, the only seat for me was in the disabled car. That bumpy ride is a memory I hope never to repeat.

Turns out in the small town of Benson our tow truck driver was also the only mechanic for miles around and he kindly put his family’s Thanksgiving dinner on hold to work on our car.

Directly across the street from his workplace my sister Mary spied the Cafe Milo, with a bright sign in the window advertising “Thanksgiving Dinner with all the fixins - $1.99.” Including homemade pumpkin pie.

We were treated so kindly by the small staff in that half-empty cafe that was about to close, but when they learned of our misfortune, they refused to bring us a bill.

I will always remember Benson, Arizona with great fondness.

And finally, there was the time on another Thanksgiving morning several decades ago when I attended Mass, but when the service ended, instead of marching out to a familiar Catholic anthem, I was surprised when the organist began to play “America the Beautiful” and we all began to sing:

O beautiful for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain

America, America
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea

Amen

When we still lived in Portland, the kids sometimes got their own table at Thanksgiving

Reach me at bobdunning@thewaryone.com