franksolich looking to spend Thanksgiving with a primitive. The neighbor was here last night (Thursday night into Friday morning) working on a piece of agricultural equipment out in the garage, and so I kindly stayed up all night myself, to help.
I’m not much of a “help†when it comes to intricate mechanical work, but nobody objects that I hang around, probably because a “go-fer†is a handy person to be nearby.
He reminded me I’m expected to have Thanksgiving dinner with his family; him, his wife, his eight-year-old twin daughters, his six-year-old son, and his three-year-old son. I’ve been doing it every Thanksgiving since I first came up here to the eastern slope of the Sandhills; eleven years now.
The neighbor lives six miles north of here, in a large ranch-style house, half wood, half brick, built in the autumn of 2002. It’s a pretty big place, with six bedrooms and four bathrooms and all that, and what is ostensibly a modern state-of-the-art kitchen.
However, beginning with Thanksgiving 2005, the neighbor’s wife has always prepared the turkey over here, usually a bird 24+ pounds, or two of them circa 15 pounds each. She found it handy, having a large and bare kitchen with a supersized stove and refrigerator.
I myself of course use the refrigerator, but rarely the stove, because it’s natural gas, and natural gas has a propensity to explode. Whenever I use it, even for just boiling water, I kick all of the cats outside, so there’ll be at least some survivors.
Besides the big stove, there’s yards and yards and yards of counter-space, immaculately bare, nothing on them.
<<lives a minimalist life-style.
So it’s handy for the neighbor’s wife; she’s got all this room to do the turkey.
She prepares it here, and puts it into a roasting-pan, giving me the instructions.
About 4:00 early Thanksgiving morning, when I’m done checking the latest nominations for the Top DUmmies of the year, I kick all of the cats outdoors (if there’s snow, or if it’s cold, they got warm places, and know about and use them), and gingerly turn on the oven.
Then I take a book and sit at the large kitchen table across the room from the stove, and sit there reading, warily watching the stove in case something goes wrong. Nothing’s ever gone wrong, but one can’t be too careful. All that happens is that the kitchen gets warmed up and the odor of roasting turkey wafts through the whole house.
The neighbor’s wife comes over about 8:00 in the morning, after which I can breath easy.
This is done at Christmas too, and the plans are to keep doing it until this place is no more.
Anyway.
The main attraction of having Thanksgiving dinner with the neighbor was the annual visit by “Auntie,†an aunt of the neighbor’s wife, from a half-way house for nuts down in Kansas City. I’ve written much about “Auntieâ€--in fact, I’ve written about her every single Thanksgiving she’s been up here--and so no point in telling the back-story on her.
Suffice it to say, “Auntie,†born back in 1950, was a child of the Age of Aquarius, a hippie chick. But the years had done her no good; by the time I met her Thanksgiving 2001, she was grossly obese, grotesquely tattooed, her body a sieve from all the piercing, and her mind had been gone since the mid-1970s.
She reminded one very much like a Christmas tree, she was so decorated with colors and metal.
The neighbor would pick her up at the bus depot in Sioux City in the middle of the night, and bring her here under the cover of darkness. Then 24 hours later, he’d repeat the trip, but the other way, fortuitously getting by with no one seeing them (excepting at the bus depot, where she was handed over to a care-taker).
She was ferocious-looking, pretty ugly and mean-looking, but for the most part she slept, probably because of the cornucopia of pharmaceuticals she was taking. I’d rather expected more action out of a “Satanic worshipper,†but it never happened. The children spent Thanksgiving dinner with their grandparents, for fear they might have nightmares upon seeing her.
So it was usually just the neighbor, his wife, “Auntie,†and franksolich (the surplus turkey was purposely made for later dining the weeks following).
I found “Auntie†utterly fascinating; couldn’t keep my eyes off of her, and my mouth always agape.
But “Auntie†paid me little or no attention until her very last Thanksgiving here. For some odd reason by chance I recited an old speech-therapy lesson I’d used for practice thirty years ago when still in college, the Roman Catholic prayer, in Latin, for the exorcism of demons.
(I have a whole repertoire of readings memorized from speech-therapy, generally stuff from Tudor England assigned me by speech-therapists who knew what they were doing.)
“Auntie†had no idea what I was reciting, but she went berserk, bananas, freaked out, lost it.
The phenomenon was awesome.
Anyway, “Auntie†died last year, and so the neighbor’s whole family and franksolich gathered around the dining room table. It wasn’t the same; I got bored.
So during this past night, I told the neighbor to put a “hold†on his invitation, because I’m scouting around for someone who’s going to have a primitive relative for Thanksgiving dinner, and contrive an invitation for myself.
He understood, and besides, the business partner and I always go over there Thanksgiving night for leftovers.
