Thanksgiving in Raymond Mississippi

This is the Hales home on Main Street in Raymond Mississippi, where I enjoyed lunch Thanksgiving day. Of course this picture was taken last Spring.

HCG December 4 2008
Thanksgiving day, I was invited to have lunch with the Hales, Cliff, and Nancy, and their children Carolyn, Joel and Blanton over in Raymond. This time of year…well, all through the year…but especially at season, the holiday season, I become nostalgic for a time that has passed by…wishing today’s children could have the uncomplicated childhood I knew…..a life lived at a slower pace…Such as when I was a kid, the whipped cream on top of the pie, came from a cow that had been milked that morning…..ran through the separator on my aunt and uncles back porch and whipped fresh for lunch. …It didn’t come from an aerosol can.


I drove over to Raymond ….The drive was beautiful, there was still lots of fall color, I pulled up and parked in front of the Hale’s home, a beautiful old home, two story, with a wrap around porch, dressed in white wicker furniture. The children were in the front yard playing kick ball with their grandparents Keith and Peggy McKey, watching from the porch swing was Keith’s mother, Carolyn McKey.

Little Carolyn came to greet me…I was carrying birdhouse, a hostess gift, I handed it down to her, Her eyes lit up, “We get to keep this?” It was just a simple thing I had made in the shop, but she was thrilled… I spoke to the ball players on the lawn and the one fan in the swing…Then went into the house passed through the front room, into the dinning room, the table was beautifully set , I found Nancy, in the kitchen, pretty as a picture, calmly engaged in preparing a meal for her family and guests. .


A colleague of Cliff’s, Tony, joined in the festivities of the day…Tony is originally from Oregon, so this was his first time to experience a southern Thanksgiving meal…Tony being from Oregon I doubted he was familiar with cornbread dressing…so anxiously I watched Tony, waiting for his reaction when took his first fork full of cornbread dressing….The Southern Thanksgiving meal is not all that different from the Midwestern ones I am familiar with…..except for the dressing…..I like it now, But years ago when I took my very first bite of cornbread dressing…I just about could not swallow it…I was so startled by the texture. But Tony liked it straight away.!


The meal was lovely, as was the company. When I left the Hales to come back to Edwards, I dove up Main Street, looped around the square and passed back by Cliff and Nancy’s…as I passed I saw the children on the lawn playing, men folks on the front porch….dogs romping in the yard You all, right then and there I had an epiphany! I came to realize, A 2008 Mississippi thanksgiving was not all that much different then a Nebraska Thanksgiving in 1948. On Thanksgiving Day Carolyn, Joel and Blanton’s they were surrounding by family, food and friends….……


And ,the Hale children when they grow up, no matter where they go, they will take their very own memories….of Thanksgivings spent on the front porch, the sound of screen doors opening and closing, dogs out in the yard catching Frisbees, and of course cornbread dressing. They do not need my old memories about cream separators…they have their very own.


The Hale Children may or may not recall my being with them this thanksgiving and that’s okay….But I can think of an honor no greater then to be part of someone’s childhood memories….

Love to all and call if you need me