A Philosophy of Thankfulness

Westphalia Publishing wants me to write a story about growing up in the 50s in Iron Mountain in the U.P. where everybody’s a Yooper and says dis and dat instead of this and that.

The book publishing company wants to use my story in a collection of stories by Boomers it wants to publish next year called “Children of the Greatest Generation.”

I’m thinking about it.

I know the story well, baseball, Mr. Wizard, building ski jumps in the woods in winter. The Italian princess wore my ring in high school. She was a cheerleader. I was the halfback. Going to the moon.

Everything changed, of course.

She wanted to be Donna Reed.

I wanted to be Kerouac.

But not everything changed. At least remnants remain. Thanksgiving, for instance.

I’ve been following the Gundry diet and am not supposed to eat anything from the Nightshade family like tomatoes and potatoes. But an old hippie Zen buddie told me once way back when: “Moderation in all things, including moderation.”

So I’ll make and eat lots of mashed potatoes smothered in turkey gravy. Mom made the best corn pudding. She’s 94 years old now and in assisted living with dad, who’s 96. Corn is frowned upon too in the Gundry diet, but if I knew how to make Mom’s corn pudding I’d eat it.

Our Thanksgivings when I was growing up in the 50s way up north where my family had been for generations was like a Norman Rockwell painting on the front cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Grandparents and great-grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles – Lutherans and Catholics. The first big winter storm always hit on Thanksgiving. Ten below, and it would get worse. All of us huddled together because that was the only way to survive a northern winter.

I was just a kid so I couldn’t be expected to know any better. But when they said I should be thankful because there were starving children in China, I believed it. But I’m older now and can think for myself and there must be a better reason for being thankful than that.