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An American Thanksgiving

© Charlotte Spell

Thanksgiving is an American tradition that began after the pilgrims arrived in the New World. The Indians and the pilgrims all sat down together and ate from the harvest of the land. The site of the first Thanksgiving took place very near to where I grew up in Virginia. I remember as a child waking up on Thanksgiving morning to the smells of turkey coming from my Mother's kitchen. My sister's and my little brother and I would run downstairs and cut on the television so that we could watch the parades. One of my favorites was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We would ooh and ah over all the beautiful floats and the big balloons. http://www.nyctourist.com/macys_menu.htm

Football was always an important part of Thanksgiving Day at my parent's house too. I remember many a Thanksgiving that the Redskins and the Cowboys played against each other. My parents were both on opposing sides. This division ran throughout the family, which made for a fun time to be had by all.

My family is from the south and so most of the dishes on the table were southern dishes. Things such as garden picked green beans, which were usually divided between two of my sisters to snap the ends off before they were rinsed off and put with the potato's, that one of the other girls had pealed and cleaned. There was some type of meat added and they were all put in a pressure cooker to cook on top the stove. My Nannie's favorite was Spoon Bread. I found a recipe for it on one of the geocities web sites along with a few other tasty recipes for mashed turnips and monkey bread. http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/Vine...

Food never tasted so good as when we finally got to sit down to the table. My Dad or one of the girls would always give grace. I remember many times that we would have family come from as far away as Nebraska for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a time when we played ate and usually took naps afterward.

My father always had a garden and the table was full of things that he had grown over the summer. We had pumpkin pies and yellow squash, beets, mashed potatos, corn etc... One-year dad grew multicolored Indian corn and we used it to decorate with. My friend Sheree and I used to pick pecans and persimmons off her granddaddy Long's trees around Thanksgiving and sometimes her mother Pauline would make pecan pies. We had all kinds of desserts on the table watergate salad and german choclate cake with coconut pecan frosting, pumkin pie, sweet potato pie.

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