Last Friday I had to be in Lower Burrell by 9am and in Fox Chapel by 10am. I was in Lower Burrell for about 25 minutes, that left me 35 minutes to get to my meeting in Fox Chapel. It would be almost impossible to be on time.
My stomach was in knots while I was driving, I kept hitting every single red light, or a back up of traffic, I was stopped at a red light, when on the radio came the theme song from the movie, "The High and The Mighty." No singing, just beautiful orchestrated music.
Without any thought, I felt myself relaxing, I could actually feel myself unwind and I let the music wash over me.
It's amazing what music, any type, can do to a person's frame of mind. This song was just what I needed. It calmed me down and I slowed down my speed, knowing it would be hard to get there on time. But, I actually reached Fox Chapel and the meeting on time. They didn't even start!
Back in the day, when my sons were growing up I use to listen to Jack Boget when he was the disc jockey on KDKA radio. I loved listening to his stories and his music. He now works for 1320 Am. I still find his voice soothing and his stories interesting.
Around Thanksgiving I kept an ear out for him to play "There's No Place Like Home For The Holidays, by Perry Como. It was a song for Thanksgiving, and also Christmas. When I heard this play I would get all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that our family's would be together.
The Thanksgiving holiday focused on Thanksgiving. Sure, we would have candles in our windows, but we would have decorations for Thanksgiving up, not Christmas decorations like most people do today.
The exciting things most people did that day was to watch the Thanksgiving parade on television. We would make sure the boys would see Santa arrive in the parade before we would leave for home, or we would leave for home early enough for them to watch it on TV there. The other excitement was the football games played on TV. The guys would be all gathered around the tube watching the game, yelling if something went good or hollering if something didn't go the way they wanted.
The kids would play flag football outside if the weather was nice, or with their cars and trucks inside if it was to cold.
The women? Guess where they were? Yes, your right. In the kitchen with all the dirty dishes and clean up. It was fun though, because the women all pitched in and talked about different things while cleaning up. With everyone talking it went fast.
My parents and my husband's lived an hour traveling time from Springdale, but they only lived 15 minutes away from each other. We would pack up all four boys, diaper bags, toys and drive to my parents home first. They always had dinner around 1 o'clock. My grandmother, aunts and uncles would be there to share in the feast.
All to soon it would be time to go, but, oops, we were late for dinner at my in-laws. We were to be there at 5. Even though we started to get ready at 4:30, by time we had everyone dressed, and packed up toys, etc., it was almost 5. Thank goodness my husband's parents understood, because they always waited for us before they started to eat. We had to force ourselves to eat, because we were still full from the first meal.
In previous years Thanksgiving was celebrated by itself, not thrown in during Halloween or squeezed in with Christmas.
In my opinion, it is a sad state of affairs to see Thanksgiving being pushed by the way side. Really a turn off when you go into stores, and along side the Halloween decorations they have Christmas decorations. Then the Thanksgiving decorations are squeezed in beside the overpowering Christmas decorations.
Not only that, but the stores are open! Oh yes, they entice the people to the stores with large advertising on TV, and in the newspapers about their sales. People end up fighting and falling over each other so they get the so called "big buys".
What will the future hold for celebrating Thanksgiving? Will our children treat it as just another Sunday meal, if they still have Sunday meals?
Will they be flying to the moon to celebrate? Or ,by some chance will they realize what a wonderful holiday Thanksgiving is and celebrate it like it should be?
What do you think?
this home is where I grew up from 5yrs til the day I married at the age of 20 in 1963.
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