Thanksgiving

Today, I remember this saying on one of the plates hanging on my Grandma Minnie's kitchen wall.

Thank God for dirty dishes,
They have a tale to tell.
While others may go hungry,
We're eating very well.

We almost always spent Thanksgiving at Grandma Minnie's house with all my Redington cousins- my moms two sister's families, and Aunt Cecil and Uncle Joe Watts-Grandma's only brother who had no children or other family, and Roy and Nettie Meek from across the street. I think He was grandpa's best friend and partner.

We would draw names and have a five dollar limit Christmas gift exchange. I remember my Dad would get good leather work gloves sometimes. His old ones always seemed to have a hole or two in them. One year Aunt Cecil made me a small doll bed out of a cigar box(Uncle Joe smoked a pipe and sometimes cigars) the bed had old fashioned clothes pins on the corners and it was all painted white with ruffled pink checked bedding and a small baby doll inside. I loved it!

Grandpa Sam had a big green vinyl recliner chair that he always sat in. I would climb in his lap and he would curl his tongue at me.

They had a small toy drawer in the hall behind his chair. I remember the coffee can part way full of marbles and the button jar(a favorite). There was also a squeaky horse and a green rag doll of some kind, and a terrific wooden Chinese Checkers gameboard.
We would also play in the basement, sometimes jumping on the old hideabed down there. She had an old wringer washer down there too and lots of jars of fruit.

I loved sleeping on the pullout furniture in the living room 'cause I could fall asleep to the comforting sound of the old kitchen shelf clock.(My sister Connie and I both have simlar clocks we have found over the years.) Brent slept on the chair and Connie and I would share the couch.

In the morning Grandma would make baking powder biscuits for us and especially for Connie and then we would have cold ones to take on the road home with us too.
There was usually lots of cold, snow, and ice and Daddy would drive carefully on the road home.
When we came over the hill the first one to see our house would start singing, "I can see our house" over and over again.