Dawg reflects back on 78 Thanksgivings

Campers,

I’m alone this Thanksgiving and lazily reflecting back.

For 27 of my years I lived with a woman I was either married to or had a relationship of over a year with.

I have a couple of kids who are 51 and 50 respectively and I’ve spent a total of, like, 2 Thanksgivings with them.

None with my grandchildren.

We’re not a close family in the traditional way.

My own branch, I mean.

There was pretty much always a great dinner at my brother’s place cause his wife was best cook in family and I’m uh tellin’ you.

We’d get a couple of dozen to those and up to a hundred at reunions that went back to the turn of the Twentieth Century generation.

I loved those.

I’m an Irish story teller in my genes and these oldsters got earlier sets of same chromosomes or whatever the fuck.

Lotsa tales of bad weather and high water and snow and horses and moonshine and the wars, cause my mom’s side of family traces all the way back to a guy named Adam who fought with George Washington.

And then, these oldsters would talk to us kids about the kinds of things they’d seen the ‘oldsters’ from the previous generation to theirs that had to go to the Civil War in which one of my grandfathers died in the Union Army …

One describes one of the ‘really’ old guys he hunted with when he was a boy so we’re talking time of Lincoln.

" This fella had a muzzle loader and when he shot at a rabbit it looked like a string of nuts and bolts and rags a couple of feet long took out after that rabbit !! "

So, guy was hunting with a 16th Century Blunderbuss ??

Hmmm

Out on my own I was often the one in SF throwing the party for the ex-pats and when I was the cook, good luck, Charlie.

I’ve fucked up some pretty beautiful turkeys in my lifetime.

Don’t believe I’ve ever tried cooking one when I was straight.

Too much pressure.

Could blow at any seam.

lol

Must have been 1995 or so that my friend and me and my cat, Ben lit out for Alaska in a Ford F-100 pickup and when we got back we got a job managing a 50 or so unit building on, like, a Monday and cooked 3 turkeys and had a Fiesta in the lobby two days later on Thanksgiving.

Lotta years.

Lotta fallen soldiers.

So, I’m spending start of days til Saturday watching a friends’ cat in Bernal Heights and walking that shit kicking Hill up Cortland from Mission.

Part of the duty is being relay point in a fish thing and I won’t be more specific cept to say it involves lugging couple of full sized coolers of ice to a couple of quenched trees and what’s left I get and it was a fab piece of ‘slab’ for two and I doubt most chefs would advertise it as that, I ate half and it was fab.

Cooked in creative fashion of most retired drunks.

Think, ‘No country for old men’.

Only have one small skillet with no lid and I avoid it.

I went to only item big enuff to hold half of the fish …

My bean pot that is some kind of space age shit cause I burn my beans about 50% of the time and it always washes clean.

I’ll post a pic now and suffice to say that I had a truly wonderful day.

Biggest thanks is my friend, Becky Cohen is recovering.

My next is that Neska is still alive and producing.

My Dawg, ‘Improvised Fish broiler’ ??

h.