The media has always presented the picture postcard concept of an American Thanksgiving dinner. Think about it. Everyone in their Sunday best, sitting around the table, the children well-behaved, the grandparents looking serene and wise, Pop standing with the carving knife, and Mom looking demure and sweet.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never lived through something like that.

Now, as a child, we always did sit together at the supper table. Breakfast and lunch was different, but at night, we did sit at the table. That ended when I went off to college.

When I was a kid, I always looked forward to Thanksgiving at my maternal grandparents. That’s one reason I never had a sit-down Thanksgiving dinner until I was around fourteen or fifteen.(and then it was roast beef)

Holidays were big events on Mama Holley’s side of the family. They were farmers, and except for special occasions, had very few visitors. When the holidays arrived, all eight children with spouses and children showed up.

Can you imagine thirty-forty people trying to fit into Mama’s three-room house and her son’s two-room house next door? And houses back then weren’t like they are today. Back then, they were simply rectangles divided in half or thirds.

Now, imagine that many sitting around a table, bowing their heads, holding hands, and saying grace.

If they’d had a table big enough for everyone, they would have had to put it out in the barn with the cows and horses.

So at Mama’s, steaming platters of succulent food were placed on the table, and we served ourselves.

But you know, we never had turkey. It was always chicken. Mama had had just about every kind of chicken there was, from Red Cornish to Silver Polish.

She had chickens to spare, and so the day before Thanksgiving, she and a daughter would grab half-a-dozen, wring their necks, let them bounce around on the ground until they died, toss them in boiling water, and after a few minutes, pick them. The stench of boiling chicken feathers never leaves you. I can smell it still.

Dad always spent Thanksgiving and Christmas Days with his Mom and Dad in Wheeler. They always had a sit-down dinner, but usually with a roast or ham or chicken. Of course, Dad only had two siblings and one of them lived in Albuquerque.

I didn’t like to go because there was no one to play with, and besides, Mama Conwell always made me behave myself. Mama Holley let me get away with murder.

Of course, Dad always showed up the next day out on the farm. He liked to have a good time too.

The first time I remember sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner was in Fort Worth when one of Dad’s co-workers invited us for dinner. Later, with my first wife, we’d visit her folks up north of Fort Worth. That was a long time back, but I seem to recollect sitting down for dinner up there also.