Thanksgiving

chicken close up dish food — Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

I value the traditions we have around the end of the year but some traditions are set in stone and some are a bit more fluid. We have burgers and fireworks for the Fourth of July, a tree and eggnog for Christmas and a turkey with cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving.

Good conversation, delectable smells and the laid back mood make Thanksgiving one of my favorite meals of the year. I will always have warm feelings about this day.

The planning for Thanksgiving starts shortly after Halloween. Who has the folding chairs? Who is going to bring which dish? My wife and I always bring the turkey and she selects one of the largest ones she can find. She starts thawing it ahead of time so it will be ready for roasting. Then early Thanksgiving my wife starts the long process of cooking the bird so it will be ready for meal time.

We have three generations of Rugs that show up for this holiday. The younger grandchildren shrieking and running is the first sign that the guests have arrived and everyone is greeted at the door by these family members.

With my whole family comfortably gathered around, I can’t help but feel content. The relaxing noise of a house filled with the people I love mingles with the sound of a video game and I can’t think of anything that I would rather hear.

My Daughter’s home is airy, with a large island where she would lay out the appetizers. We used to have a seafood tradition where I would buy shrimp, clams, smoked salmon etc. that we would lay out before dinner along with chips, dips, salsas, pickles, etc. Honestly you could make a meal from the appetizers. I had to quit buying the seafood however as it got too expensive to buy crab legs for a dozen people.

Once the cooking starts, the kitchen seems a bit cramped though, like working on a food truck. The delicious smell of a turkey roasting fills the house with delicious aromas. It’s all worth it though when the aroma of the Brussels sprouts roasting in the oven waft out to fill the house in yet another delightful smell. From the time my wife starts cooking the turkey until the satisfaction of that last bite, when I am too full to move, Thanksgiving never fails to fulfill my expectations.

When the large assortment of dishes is finally cooked and put on the dining room table, we all sit down and it’s time to dig in to a family style meal. My daughter serves up the best corn dish ever created. It’s creamy, with a smooth texture but she serves many, many more delectable concoctions. But every dish is better than the last and to just sample every dish on the table fills your plate. You need a side plate to hold your dinner roll.

Dinner conversations are lively, with hilarious jokes that have me laughing so hard my eyes are tearing and stories that often revolve around my children’s childhood. The conversations around the table are a refreshing change from the chaos of everyday life. When my whole family is at my daughter’s house, we have to split the family into the adult’s table and the kid’s table. This is a poor description though, considering some of my grandchildren are all grown up and living by themselves. In fact one year I ate at the kid’s table and I am the oldest family member, the patriarch of this motley crew.

I promise myself each year that I’m not going to eat too much but it always happens. Just when you have had to open your belt a hole or two and you think you are done, the table gets cleared and the homemade desserts come out. There are usually three to choose from and you have just a small piece of each one so you won’t have to unbutton your pants. Every year I feel as if I could just make it to the couch and take a nap, I would be fine.

Once dinner was over we would go back to the living room to watch some grade B horror movies. We used to have a competition to see who can find the worst movie. My son won one year with a movie called “bad taste“. Talk about truth in advertising. Unfortunately this tradition had to change the year that a movie depicted a head rolling across the floor and my grandson took off saying “I’m outta here “.

The hours of work preparing the food are always worth being able to share a meal with others and with all the wonderful people in my family, it’s impossible not to have an enjoyable time. With its easy going, laid back attitude, Thanksgiving almost tops Christmas as my favorite holiday of the year.

The comfortable attitude is infectious, and for a time we can all forget our worries over a cup of steaming hot chocolate with mini marshmallows.

From my family to yours, have a happy Thanksgiving.

Mohegan Market

woman carrying basket of fruits and vegetables — Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

One of my memories from growing up in Buffalo was walking with my mother to the Mohegan Market on Bailey Avenue at East Amherst Street. Most people went shopping daily or every other day back then. There were no big box, wholesale stores where you could buy a package of toilet paper that would last six months. This is the present site of The Buffalo Promise Neighborhood Children’s Academy.

Mohegan was a small independent grocer based in the Buffalo area. They had four stores, one at 2228 Seneca at Buffum, one at 95 Grant at Breckenridge, another at 2643 Main at Fillmore and this one at 3149 Bailey. You would enter thru the front door and there would be fresh produce on the right side and a register and the meat cases on the left. There was always a friendly butcher wearing a blood stained white apron leaning on the case ready to cut your meat to order. This was a true “old school” meat market with sawdust sprinkled on the floor.

I recently found an advertisement from December 20, 1954 listing some of their prices. They had whole Chickens for $.29 a pound, cooked hams, Pork roast for $.29 a pound, Chuck roast for $.49 a pound and something they called Hamburg steak at 2 lbs. for $.69.

If you went past the meat cases to the back of the store and took a left, you were in the area where they had the dairy case, canned foods, pasta, paper goods and bread. There was no aisle after aisle of frozen food cases but instead they had just one reach in frozen food case with a clear sliding top. You could get some “Birds Eye” frozen vegetables that came in a rectangular box (no bags) or maybe a frozen “TV” dinner from this section of the store. Your home refrigerator freezer wasn’t much larger than a cubic foot so you didn’t have a lot of room to stock up on frozen foods. Frequently you would leave out the ice cube tray to gain more room.

The fish monger used to deliver their order in an ice filled wooden box. Mohegan used to put the box out behind the store to allow the ice to melt. If my friends and I would find this, we would have a snowball fight in the middle of summer. This ice, although smelly, gave us a cooling diversion. One day I “copped” one of these boxes and loaded it on my radio flyer wagon. I then dragged it home. I made a fairly respectable “soap box racer” out of it using some old wagon wheels that kept us entertained one entire summer.

My mother would give me fifty cents to go and get a loaf of Wonder bread and a quart of Sealtest milk. I could keep the change and I frequently spent the change on penny candy like Hot Tamales, Atomic Fire Balls, Turkish Taffy, Boston Baked Beans or a Chuckles Jelly Candy. Back then, candy bars cost a nickel. They also had a few glass gum ball machines at the door filled with gum balls and Ike and Mikes to entice the last few pennies out of you. I would throw the groceries in my bike basket and pedal my way home fueled by sugar and the desire to get home so I could play with my friends.

I remember one day when I found a dollar bill on the floor. In the fifties, a dollar was a small fortune to a preteen boy. This prompted a trip to the corner store to buy my friends and me penny candy (which actually cost a penny) and comic books.

Most of the small neighborhood grocers are gone where the clerks all knew you by name, you would bump into your friends and the butcher would custom cut your order for you and I miss them.

Halloween

selective focus photo of ghost ornament — Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

One of my favorite times growing up in Buffalo during the 60’s occurred in late October every year. It was the Halloween season. I always enjoyed the cooler days and nights around this time of the year. Fall represented to me a warm cup of fresh pressed apple cider with a cinnamon stick, homemade pumpkin pie, carving jack o lanterns, caramel apples and the smell of burning leaves.

But best of all was the night we would go trick or treating. Growing up in Buffalo, we went trick-or-treating on October 30th, what we called Beggar’s Night. There was a very good reason they called it “Beggar’s Night.” I would go out knocking on doors and ringing doorbells collecting sweets along the way.

I would hastily eat my dinner that evening and get into my costume that I would have laid out on my bed in anticipation of the night to come. We didn’t have the readily available costumes or a fancy dancy Halloween store in those days so I had to improvise. I had a total of two different costumes back then. The first costume was a ghost. All this outfit took was an old bed sheet that I would cut eye holes in with a pair of scissors.

My other costume was a hobo. This took a bit more effort. I would get one of my father’s old work shirts and roll up the sleeves. I would also wear my worst, worn out pair of jeans. Ones that were frayed on the bottom and had a few holes in them. Sometimes they would have to be rescued from the rag bag. I would bunch up a ball of newspaper, tie it in a bandana and would carry this on a stick thrown over one shoulder. To complete the look, I would char a cork and draw a three day shadow on my chin and face. I thought I looked good.

While my parents were busy partying with their friends, I would go out on my night time candy raids. My treasure collection bag consisted of either an old pillow case or a paper shopping bag with handles that my mother had gotten when she shopped at an upscale store. I didn’t have one of those ornate, preprinted bags designed just for trick or treat or the plastic “T shirt” bags that we all know, the ones you see blowing around on a windy day.

I would return to my house several times during the night when my “loot” bag was getting heavy, pour it out on a newspaper on the dining room floor and head out in a different direction to gather even more swag. It was not uncommon to go five blocks in any direction and collect at least one large shopping bag full of candy and goodies that night.

One night two teenagers (gods to a pre-teen) approached me and said they were participating in a scavenger hunt and asked if I knew where they could find some of the items on their list. The one thing that sticks out in my mind was a burned out light bulb. They came to the right person because I had just acquired one I was going to experiment with.

They followed me to my home on Berkshire Avenue where I helped them fill their list as much as I could. They thanked me, gave me their address and told me to tell the lady who answered the door that I had helped them out and that she should “take care” of me.

It was getting late when I got there as it was about 4 blocks away. I think she gave me all the candy she had left because she turned off her porch light as I was leaving. She was probably happy to get rid of all the extra candy she had.

When I was done collecting my yearly booty, I would start the job of sorting out my loot. My parents would have me throw out all unwrapped candy, the small bags of homemade popcorn and the apples I had collected lest they were tampered with by the insertion of pins, needles or razor blades. Why someone would do this to a kid is beyond me. I was only permitted to keep the factory sealed items.

I would then start trading things with my brother and sister, swapping what I didn’t want for something I wanted from them.

Ah, those were the good old days, a period of better times. A time that I believe was better, simpler and more wholesome than the current period. But then I think my memory of them is a bit rosier than it actually was.

Times have changed, gone are the days you could let your children run around the neighborhood, unsupervised, late at night. Gone are the days that we used to have a hundred or more children visiting our front door. We now have maybe thirty five or forty kids that come on our porch, dressed in store bought costumes carrying store bought bags gathering their annual spoils. But I still enjoy watching the kids come on my porch and hearing the gleeful sounds of “Trick or Treat”.

Norb is a writer and blogger from Lockport, New York. You can write him at nrug@juno.com or follow his blog at whywny.home.blog

Please Won’t You Be My Neighbor

. download

Won’t you please, won’t you please, please won’t you be my neighbor?

It’s a beautiful day to talk about Mister Rogers. Fifteen years after the legendary host of a children’s TV program passed away, the entertainment world is being swept up in Fred Rogers revivalism. I know Mister Rodgers’ Neighborhood was written for preschoolers but I liked this much more than any of the children’s shows airing now days that are frequently just thinly veiled sales pitches. I actually enjoyed watching Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood with my grandchildren.

First, there was director Morgan Neville’s filmed documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Those who have watched it feel obligated to caution people who haven’t seen it to bring a box of tissues because there will be tears. Neville wasn’t trying to keep viewers crying from start to finish, blame the documentary’s subject, who’s so kind that his very presence effects even the most cynical viewers.

But the documentary isn’t the only tribute to Fred Rogers making the rounds. Not long after “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” debuted at the Sundance film festival, TriStar Pictures declared plans to film a biopic, with Tom Hanks playing Rogers that is based on Tom Junod’s classic 1998 Esquire article about his friendship with the TV host.

PBS, home of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from 1968 until 2000, aired the 50th anniversary tribute to Fred Rogers, hosted by Michael Keaton, “It’s You I Like” On March 20 which was Rogers’ 90th birthday. Twitch, a live streaming video platform owned by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon, teamed with PBS to launch a marathon of 90 of the most well-liked episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. This was followed by a complete run of the series. For those still into cds, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: It’s A Beautiful Day” collection collects over 900 minutes of classic episodes and moments. It arrived in stores on March 27.

I think that vintage Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is as relevant now as it once was. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was created for preschoolers. There are obvious differences concerning what toddlers and older children need to see on TV.

When Fred Rogers felt a calling to work in television instead of as an ordained Presbyterian minister. His goal was to make something more tranquil than what young children were watching when their parents set them down to watch TV. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood doesn’t over stimulate children. He speaks slowly and softly in simple sentences and even during the times that the show goes to the palace of King Friday XIII, populated by puppets, the stories are muted in tone, without violence, and deliver lessons about proper behavior. This is a far cry from “The Roadrunner” cartoons that I used to watch as a child.

So why is everybody so in love with Mister Rogers? It’s partly nostalgia. I’ve long felt that our desire to return to the shows we grew up with has to do with the belief that those were the good old days. Our memories of the past are so imprecise sometimes. Revisiting popular culture of the past can help clarify memories that we’ve forgotten.

What stands out about Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is the general calmness and simplicity. Rogers understood that occasionally adults assume too much about what kids comprehend, or that they are too rushed to talk to children about the basics of life. So he would explain everything from the functioning of the human body to the reason some real-world events upset grown-ups. His primary message was that everyone feels helpless, overwhelmed, ignorant, or even angry sometimes. That emotions are part of being alive and that being alive is great.

Rogers’ persona and ideals were under attack just before he died. Right-wing talk radio hosts, columnists, and TV commentators accused the “softness” and “entitlement” of Generation X on the immorality of Mister Rogers, who told kids they were special, no matter what. Their disagreement with Fred Rogers’ life’s work is that it persuaded children they didn’t need to achieve anything.

That criticism isn’t totally wrong. But it’s more than a little wrong. It’s usually coming from commentators who identify themselves as conservative Christians. Rogers’ view of the world was connected to his theology, and to the Christian theory of “grace.” This idea is that we are all broken, but that we are loved and matter to God. That’s a fundamental belief held by many Christians.

It’s not a position or perspective we see coming from a TV personality very often. That is also a part of the charm of Fred Rogers. To try and make Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood political is just wrong. Fred Rogers used this show to promote inclusion for people of all backgrounds, races, and capabilities.

I read an unverified story once about Mr. Rogers. It is alleged that one day his car was stolen while parked on a street in Pittsburgh. The evening news reported that Mr. Rogers’ car had been stolen that night. The next day, it was back in the same spot with a note that said, “Sorry, we didn’t know it was yours.” Whether the story is true or not, that is part of the way Fred Rodgers made us feel. He gave us the impression that we were part of his family.

Tagged with Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Fred Rogers

image from snappynewday.com