Thanksgiving: A Backward Look
Krayton Kerns
11.21.07
Thanksgiving has changed. When I was a kid it meant a two hour marathon with me and my two brothers bouncing around the back seat of the family station wagon as we left the alkali flats of Ingomar and rattled down the road to Wyoming. We entertained ourselves with the “He-Touched-Me-No-I-Didn’t” game and we obnoxiously played it the entire way. Mom and Dad didn’t particularly care for the game. Nowadays parents who tire of this event simply move car-seats to different corners of the vehicle and the game stops. In the days before car-seats, the game played on until Dad stopped the car and walloped someone. (That was before parents were concerned about self-esteem so it was okay to wallop someone when they needed it. We needed it. Besides, that’s what made the game exciting.)
Once on Pass Creek, the dress was formal and we youngsters wore wool sport coats with white shirts and the funniest, dinky bow ties. I looked like a miniature Lt. Gov. Bohlinger with freckles and a crew-cut. The table was elegantly set with my Nana’s finest china and a lace tablecloth. We knew the day was special and while we were seated for dinner we did our best to use the table manners taught us by our parents. We used the correct fork, passed food correctly, and said please and thank you. My brothers and I were on our best behavior…or reasonably best behavior.
During my college years Thanksgiving took on a whole new meaning. There were no classes on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday so if I cut classes on Monday and Tuesday I could take 9 days off for pheasant hunting…I mean Thanksgiving. College was great. One of the biggest shocks to college graduates is that real life doesn’t operate on the semester system. No 9 days off at Thanksgiving, 5 weeks for Christmas, a week for spring break, or 3 months off every summer. Reality sucks.
Thanksgiving 1979 was my first as a married man and the rigors of my freshman year of vet school meant there wasn’t going to be a 9 day pheasant hunt this year. A huge snow storm hit Fort Collins and with the roads closed, it looked like my trophy wife and I wouldn’t make it home. We were crushed. (Al Gore was busy designing the internet and hadn’t invented global warming yet. The impending ice age was the socialist rant of the ‘70s.)
The storm broke temporarily the evening before Thanksgiving and many roads opened, so we tore out of Colorado on US287 towards home. Unbeknownst to us, Rob and Mac, brothers who would later become our good friends, left Ft. Collins headed north on I-25 about the same time. We made the 375 miles to northern Wyoming by 1:00am. Rob and Mac made it 80 miles to Chugwater where they and 30 other travelers became snowbound for the next 7 days. Their Thanksgiving in the Chugwater gymnasium began memorable but after 7 days all thanks were set aside and everyone prayed for a chinook.
Thanksgiving 2007 will be at our house in Laurel. Mom and Dad will drive up from the ranch. Meagan and Tim will bring grandkids Clara, Mae and Grant from Kalispell. Tyler and Chelsie will join us from college. Unfortunately my brothers and their families can’t make it. Time constraints and other commitments keep them elsewhere and those are excuses I have used all too often myself. Many relatives who are memories of this skinny kid in a bow tie, are now gone. The emptiness created by their absence is slowly filled by the next generation. I didn’t appreciate family time in 1962. I do now. May you all have a great holiday and savor every moment you spend with family and friends.
