Here We Are – The Pilgrims' Pride

First published November 18, 2005

The car pulls into Great Aunt Ellen’s driveway at exactly five minutes after eleven on a fine Thanksgiving morning. Since the moment the family left the house, an hour before dawn this morning, Todd Junior and Little Suzie have been passing the hours playing festive travel games, alternating between the traditional “Let’s Make Little Suzie Cry!” and the crowd-pleasing “Mom, Todd’s Making Me Cry!”


Before the car has quite rolled to a stop, Mom, Todd Junior and Little Suzy are out and sprinting for the bathroom. Dad, who apparently has a much larger bladder, joins Great Uncle Charlie and Uncle Fred in the garage where they are squatting on the floor and studying the directions for a brand-new turkey fryer.

Great Aunt Ellen has arranged fifteen fire extinguishers at strategic points around the garage. Now she’s standing behind the men, explaining how a story she saw on the six o’clock news proved that frying a turkey in the garage is more dangerous than tossing a burning road flare into a bathtub full of napalm.

Grandpa is sitting in a recliner in the living room watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. Grandpa is wearing a flannel shirt, wool pants, two pairs of socks, insulated work boots, and long johns. Grandpa has adjusted the thermostat so that the air in the living room is hot enough to curl the wallpaper.

Grandma, Mom, Aunt Karen and Aunt Meg are in the kitchen making things like pumpkin pies and mashed potatoes. Aunt Meg had wanted to make a mincemeat pie, but Grandma reminded her that Uncle Stan is bringing his new girlfriend, and she’s some kind of a vegetarian, so they’d better stick with pumpkin.

Before long Todd Junior has drafted Karen’s boy Sheldon and Aunt Meg’s twins into a rousing game of “Let’s Catch Little Suzie And Tickle Her ‘Till She Pees!” In her seven years on Earth as Todd Junior’s younger sister, Little Suzie has developed the survival skills of a ninja, so she locks all four boys in the basement and settles down to play Barbies with her cousins Brittany and Pammie.

The men carefully lower the turkey into the hot oil as Great Aunt Ellen falls to her knees and pleads for salvation. Aunt Meg tries without success to convince Grandma that mincemeat is not really meat, and besides they’re having turkey, which is really meat, so she doesn’t see the problem. Aunt Karen becomes a little hysterical when she realizes that you don’t get gravy when you deep-fry the turkey, but Mom and Aunt Meg calm her down by opening another bottle of White Zinfandel.

Carl the Dog, lying on the floor next to Grandpa’s chair, suffers a heat stroke.

And then, at last, the feast is ready. Uncle Stan and his girlfriend Stacey show up just as Great Uncle Charlie brushes the last of the white fire extinguisher stuff off the turkey and fires up the electric carving knife. After a fairly intensive cross-examination by Aunt Meg, it turns out that Stacey’s a veterinarian, not a vegetarian, and mincemeat pie would have been just fine with her – maybe even her absolute favorite.

As soon as Thanksgiving Dinner is over, Uncle Stan and Stacey excuse themselves to go celebrate Thanksgiving with Stacey’s relatives. Grandma won’t let them go to their second turkey dinner of the afternoon without sending along a bag of leftovers.

The women all hug and kiss Stacey goodbye, then they go to the kitchen to clean up the dishes and discuss how selfish she is to drag Stan away from his family on Thanksgiving.

The men retire to the living room, where the paint on the ceiling is beginning to blister, and sprawl about in nests of couch pillows and perspiration to snore through a couple of football games.

Little Suzie traps the boys in an upstairs linen closet, then joins the girls to resume the Barbies marathon.

And all is right with the world.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball