November 28, 1992: A Tour of Crump's Garden
	November 21, 1992: My 46th Birthday Party
	Return to the Index for 1992

This is the first year that Fred gets inducted into one of my own traditions- that of cooking a large Thanksgiving turkey and inviting as many of my friends over as have no family that they will be with, or no other Thanksgiving celebration to attend. Sometimes, this means a lot of people; other times, just a few. It is a tradition my Dad started me on when I was growing up; we almost always had someone else for Thanksgiving, oftentimes a bachelor from his office or perhaps someone in Charlotte on business.

This will be one of the small years. Larry has family he will be with, as do Lowery and Ron. Ron Mathis has gone home to Little Rock to be with his family, and Chris is working a holiday shift at his company. So that leaves just me, Fred and Greg, my oldest (in length of time, not in age, as he is younger than me) friend. As he usually likes to do, Greg arranged to be in Dallas for Thanksgiving. He has no family to go to, and it is a holiday where one should be with them or with friends, and I am pleased that he considers me the person he would like to spend this holiday with.

Fred does have some family over in Fort Worth- a stepmother and brother- and he had been with them earlier in the day, but we have grown close enough that he decided to come over in the early evening in time to eat another meal with Greg and I. (Fred's mother lives outside a very small town southwest of Fort Worth, and he goes to see her every fifth week for a weekend, and this is not one of those, and for his mother, Thanksgiving is really just another Thursday.)

I tried to set the table as Grant would have done it, but I am sure that I missed some things that he would not have overlooked. I thank Grant for all the work he put into the house, and all the nice things he left me. It makes it appear as if I have taste, when all along it was Grant who supplied that quality that I lacked. If there was ever an occasion to use the Blue Danube, this was it.

I, of course, have family back in North Carolina, but they will all be together at my sister's house today, and so don't need me to have someone to be with. This has been my tradition since leaving the Army and moving to Chicago in 1971; the only years that I have not done a full Thanksgiving Dinner and had friends over to share it were those relatively few years that I did indeed go home to North Carolina to be with the rest of my family. The two years following my own father's death were among them.

(Picture at left) In addition to our group portrait, Fred took two candid shots of me in the kitchen getting the turkey carved. Greg knows my tradition with the turkey, and now Fred does, too. I guess I just don't think the holiday is the same without it.   (Picture at right) Usually, I cook the biggest damn turkey I can find. I figure that if you are going to go to all that trouble, you might as well have turkey left over, and the amount of trouble has little relationship to the size of the bird. This year, it was a twenty-one pound bird, which was four pounds under my record, set one Thanksgiving in Chicago when there were only two people eating it. I have a running contest with my sister to see who cooks the larger turkey, and I win it most years. I think that seven pounds of turkey per guest is pretty good, don't you?

The dinner went very well, as they usually do; Greg actually stayed later than is normal for him, and I was pleased at that. Fred, of course, stayed the night, because he had to be at the greenhouses tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. It is the annual greenhouse tour weekend.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	November 28, 1992: A Tour of Crump's Garden
	November 21, 1992: My 46th Birthday Party
	Return to the Index for 1992