At Uncle Will's - 1943

     There’s a lot of cooking and cleaning happening at our house this week – undoubtedly, a mirror image of the activities occurring in homes throughout America.  For us, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the Holiday Season and, predictably, it puts me in mind of past gatherings.
     When I was little and we lived in California, going “over the river and through the woods” meant, of course, going north to Oysterville.  That big trek was reserved for Christmas (sometimes) and for summer vacations.  At Thanksgiving, all the California relatives gathered at my grandfather’s brother’s house in San Francisco.
     Uncle Will was the Water Commissioner there and Aunt Minette had been a Home Economics Major (always said in beginning capital letters) at Oregon State.  They had a big, beautiful home in St. Francis Wood – I remember being fascinated with the dumbwaiter in the upstairs hall that we were told NOT to play with – and I loved going there on family occasions.
     Thanksgiving meant seeing my second cousins, watching Uncle Will carve the huge turkey, minding my manners under the watchful eye of Aunt Minette, and dancing the Looby Loo while my mother’s cousin Alice played the piano.  It also meant signing the guest book before we went home.
     I have a very clear memory of my dad lifting my up to the tall hall table to sign that book.  I must have been five or six and after I had written my name, first and last, in all capital letters, he urged me to “say something.”  I remember feeling pressured and my mind going blank – my first experience with writer’s block!  Finally, Daddy suggested that I just write that the dinner was good.
     Those words, written in huge block letters and taking up way more than my share of the lines, still haunt me.  In subsequent visits, I would flip back the pages of the guest book to peek at that page and wish that I had said something clever or meaningful and, mostly, that I had written it smaller and more neatly.
     In retrospect, of course, I think it probably summed the day up very nicely.  We don’t have any five or six-year-olds coming to our Thanksgiving Dinner this year.  Quite the opposite end of the age spectrum, in fact.  But I hope that, when all is said and done, they leave with same sentiment I expressed those many years ago!