Thanksgiving memories
By Chris Jennings/Herald Democrat

Thanksgiving memories are the kind of thing that can mold a person. Being around family that sometimes only sees each other during those couple of days a year can bring out the best in a person.

As I tried to come up with a couple of Thanksgiving memories one of the things that keeps popping into my head is that there are always people that are not family at our family gatherings. I never really thought that much about it until this assignment.

The fact that my family has always opened our doors to other people at a time that is traditionally spent with relatives has placed in me a willingness to let others in when some others might not.

There really aren’t any specific Thanksgivings that stand out, but I do have a few snap shots of some Thanksgivings over the years.

I’ll always remember doing Thanksgiving lunch at a Chinese food restaurant off Lemon Avenue in Dallas with my father for a few years. The strange part about that is that he was a professional chef at some big name restaurants during that time. I guess since he cooked day and night he didn’t want to do it on his day off.

During one of my first Thanksgivings with my wife’s family I remember bringing a pecan pie. I didn’t cook it, I just bought one somewhere and presented it. I might have claimed to have cooked it, and put it in the foil pan with a plastic lid. I’m sure they saw through that farce.
The point to this one is that from that time forward according to Heather’s grandmother, God rest her soul, pecan pie was my favorite and anytime I came over she always made one for me. I never could muster up the courage to tell her that I didn’t like Pecan pie all that much and that pumpkin was my favorite.

There was the ice storm Thanksgiving a few years ago that I’m sure many people remember here. It would not have been that big of a deal had we not been in Dallas. It took us five hours to get home.

I remember a couple of years ago when my daughter, who was five years old at the time, helping my mother cook the Thanksgiving meal.

What I can’t remember is a Thanksgiving that I wasn’t with friends and family, and that, I’m thankful for.