Tanks-givin

When i was a kid Thanksgiving was the one holiday that we got to spend with my dad's family and i'm not trying to knock me old mom's side but the truth is that my dad's side was infinitely more interesting and entertaining.  It started with my grandmother, a woman who grew up dirt poor on a farm near Jackson, Tennessee.  For a woman from the deep south who grew up in the 1920's and 30's she was about as liberal as you could get and didn't tolerate racism or homophobia, her children would tell you point blank that if you wanted to catch a smack all you had to do was drop the N-word or call someone a faggot, she took no shit and taught her children to think for themselves, at her funeral i found out her favorite baseball player was Larry Doby (who broke the American League color barrier) and that football player Jim Brown had near god-like status (and to those of us from Cleveland still does).  What i loved about this day was that unlike my other grand-ma's the conversation at this house was lively and intelligent...

As a kid i found it fascinating to sit around and listen in on the adults as i pretended to watch football, it was a house full of opinions and strong personalities and at times the intellectual sparring could become fierce, i remember my Aunt Judy and Uncle Paul having a spirited debate one year when the local rock station WMMS did a Beatles A to Z thing, they both loved the Beatles and listening to them go back and forth was a fascinating thing for a kid, it opened up whole new worlds to what music was and could be and watching my Aunt standing by the stereo, glass of wine in one hand, cigarette in the other, swaying to the music, as i got older of course i began to be included in the conversations... what i remember most though was that my grandmother always made me slice and bake chocolate chip cookies cuz they were my favorite ( a practice that continued well into my late 20's) that her big old orange cat Edgar would wander in and out of the house and Edgar and i would usually catch a nap curled up on a corner of a couch, the house was always warm and smelled like Thanksgiving dinner and no one ever left early to go shopping...

My grandmother spent twenty some odd years working at Sears up until she retired to become a full-time granny, back then Thanksgiving was supposed to be spent with family, the stores were not open, of course during the Wilderness Years i spent a few with a bottle or nursing some of the most epic and agonizing hangovers i'd ever have, i remember one day trying to find a place to eat because i was so hungover  and yet nothing was open, it was twenty years ago? of course then came the time when i'd go to the Breadwinner's parents for the holiday, a family that's always been big on shopping, even the ones who claim they're not, i remember her brother and his wife getting up early to go hit the sales, you know the 6am Friday door buster that was all the rage back in the early aughts... then things began to change...

If you notice a train of thought here maybe it's the season or maybe i smoke to much grass, slowly of course the corporate oligarchs began to co-opt this day, as they are known to do with almost any fucking day they can, to turn it into some kind of ritualistic orgy of shopping and consumption, it no longer was about sitting down with some people you love or mildly dislike or just plain annoy the fucking shit out of you to eat and drink and talk, no no, it became a day to plot and plan a strategy to score the most shit and get a good deal (though those same "deals" would still be there come next week), instead of people having a day off to be with their family it became a day of commerce and work just like any other day except now the retail work day started at 5 or 6pm and went all fucking night!!! praise be the almighty dollar, you can have your turkey dinner but then you need to get your ass to work sucker, the masters need their gelt.. and so it is that now the meaning of Thanksgiving is nothing more than a synonym for quarterly earnings and the state of the economy, the oligarchs still use their mouthpieces (advertisers) to push the myth of family and HUGE savings but for those paying attention we know the myth is bullshit... had things been like this when i was a kid i'd have missed out on some great days because my grandma would've had to go to work...

The boyos are being well schooled in the evils of Black Friday, it sounds much like that sermon above and it probably doesn't hurt that their old man's a misanthrope, we avoid all things retail, i took them to gym for a basketball day camp for three hours, i made the short drive home and lay on the couch and listened to records and read books, beats the piss out of fighting for televisions and parking spots, we ate leftovers and played a game, it was a pattern that continued all weekend, they trekked into the park near our house returning muddy and tired and happy, i spun more records and pulled tubes and read books, we ate more leftovers, we saved a bunch of money because we didn't buy a thing, that's not to say that things won't get bought, try as i might i can't deny the culture i live in or the place that i live, but i'm trying to take back just a little maybe, to suggest that life isn't all about consumption and the trinkets you get but about the people and the days you spend with them and how when those days are gone they will be more valuable than anything bought or sold... strange how the free things can be so priceless...