Thoughts of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day is a great holiday. It’s uniquely American and it comes with a simple agenda – enjoy family; watch the Macy’s parade in the morning; eat well; drink heartily; watch football in the afternoon (those not watching football will often be found playing cards or board games). This day is essentially free of the commercial burden placed on almost all other holidays. Even the menu of the day is free of controversy for the millions of Americans who are more than happy to accept the default table filled with turkey, ham, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce and hot rolls. By and large, vegetables need not apply for a place on this table. Corn or green beans or a salad may be invited to join the feast but they play a decidedly minor roll on most plates. Moms know that this is not a day to be instructing their husbands and sons on the virtues of eating right.

Then there are the pies. Thanksgiving is a celebration of pies. Pumpkin is de rigueur. Apple and berry pies abound with crusts that are a little lighter and a litter sweeter than at any other time of the year. Pecan pie is often on hand for those who really need to trigger an insulin tsunami. Rhubarb might be available if the family has small town or country roots. And, for some unknown reason, something called mincemeat makes its annual appearance. No one knows what mincemeat is; it’s eaten only by people over 75 years old. It must help with kidney functioning.

This morning I read an article in the paper about a family that lost everything it had in fire in October. They are one of about 10 families that the our paper will focus on in its annual “Share the Season” campaign in which readers will be invited to grant the wishes of a few families in need. I will make a donation for this family because fire and a holiday celebration have crossed paths in my life.

My earliest Thanksgiving memories are of spending that holiday in the mid and late 50s at my grandfather’s home in Camp Verde, Arizona. It was a fitting locale for this holiday. Grandpa’s home was once the bachelor officers’ quarters at Fort Verde, a U.S. Cavalry fort in the 1880s. The home is now on the National and State Register of Historic Places and part of the Fort Verde State Historic Park. It’s a little odd to visit a historical museum and tell your children that you used to sleep in this room, eat in that room, and play on a swing that hung on the porch. There was something about celebrating an old-fashioned Thanksgiving in that historic home that just seemed right.

But it’s another holiday spent in that home that most readily brings “thanks” to mind. It was a Christmas in 1957 or 58. On this Christmas morning my dad had walked down the street to visit his aunt, who lived in a home that had been the doctors’ quarters at Fort Verde. As he walked back to his dad’s home he saw black smoke coming from the roof. His first thought is that my brother or I had thrown something made of rubber into the fireplace. He soon realized the smoke was coming from around the fireplace chimney rather than out of it. He got all of us out of the home and called the Camp Verde volunteer fire department. I’ll never forget what happened next.

The volunteer firemen responded immediately notwithstanding the fact that they were in the middle of Christmas morning with their families. The word spread fast in the little town and as people realized that one of their great historical homes was on fire they streamed to the sight. With the unplanned organization of a beehive people entered the home and emptied it of every moveable thing in the home – furniture, appliances, wall hangings, knickknacks, linens, clothing, kitchen utensils, pantry contents – and everything that was being prepared for Christmas dinner. At the same time, my dad and others were up on the roof and in the attic knocking down the fire. A spark from the fireplace had apparently exited a crack in the chimney and started an attic fire.

The fire was quickly extinguished with relatively little damage to the structure and smoke only getting into one unused room on the third floor. The third floor was the mystery floor with locked rooms that children never entered. We were told that the stairway leading up to that floor was unsafe, so we hardly ever ventured up there. If something odd was going to happen in that home, we knew it would be on the third floor.

To our amazement once the fire was out and all was safe the townspeople just as quickly returned every single thing that had been removed from the home back to its original location – including putting the Christmas dinner back in the oven and on the stove. We had dinner as planned that afternoon. It was as if nothing had happened. We gave thanks that day for our family, for the home we were in and, most importantly, to the community that had responded selflessly to save the home and our holiday. We repeated that thanksgiving at every Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner that we later had in that home.

When grandpa’s health finally required him to leave his home the family donated it to the state historical park. As we packed everything we were finally allowed into the rooms on the third floor. They’d been used only for some incidental storage. But, on a top shelf in the back of one closet my mom found a small treasure – the carefully folded uniform of a Cavalry officer, an Army bugle, and an old violin. These items were donated to the Fort Verde museum, where the uniform and bugle are still on display.

Almost three decades later I visited the museum and told the story about the Christmas fire and the closet discovery. The park ranger said they had found the evidence of an old fire in my grandpa’s home but didn’t know what had happened. I asked him about the violin because it wasn’t on display. He remembered it and said it pre-dated the historical period of the fort so it wasn’t being shown. He asked if I’d like to have it back. As I took it with me I thought about several Thanksgivings, one very special Christmas and the community who rescued it, and about finally entering the locked rooms on the third floor and finding a small treasure that had been awaiting discovery for more than 80 years.

This Thanksgiving those thoughts return, and they’re warmer than the dressing and gravy and sweeter than the crust on the berry pie.