My parents, brother and I would spend Thanksgiving at our grandma at the farm's house in the 70s and early 80s. She lived about an hour away and I always enjoyed the drive down there. She moved in with her brothers at the farm after my parents got married and she let them have her apartment. We didn't get to see her much - 3 or 4 times a year. It's not fair that Dad didn't want us going to visit her but we got to see his mom everyday. I wish that we had more photos of the farm but this is it. I can't remember being there any other time than Thanksgiving. We'd see her at Aunt Al's house at Christmas and she'd come up here one or two times. We might've seen more of her when we were younger.
There was a box of toys that she kept in a room that we never went into - or was it just a closet. There was a Pillsbury Dough Boy that I liked playing with and a car attached to a string that my brother pulled around. In another room was a pool table. I was only upstairs in her bedroom once. In the yard near the house was a tree with a swing hanging from a big branch. We would sometimes sit under the dining room table and watch TV. I remember a Hanna Barbera cartoon - The Blue Falcon being on once . My cousin Gene David was taking pictures of the farm one day - it might've been for a class project. We did look at the farm animals sometimes but those memories are hazy.
I can still smell all the good food in my memory. I never tried the turnips or mincemeat pie though. She made excellent apple and pumkin pies. There was about 16 - 20 people at these special dinners. I was upset when the people who owned the land told her that she had to move because they were redoing the house and giving it to their son - I think that's who got the place. They didn't give her much time to find a new house, maybe 2 or 3 months. She moved to Bordentown and was closer to my Aunt Al. My brother and I always thought of her as Grandma at the farm though. We had a few Thanksgivings there but in 1985 it was at my Aunt's house and unfortunatley in 1986 my grandma passed away in early November. We went to a friend of the family's grandmas house that year. It's sad that our family tradition was over.
My grandma made those two snowmen on top of the TV. She did alot of crafts. She taught me how to do a basic crochet stitch and even got me a set of hooks that I still have. My Aunt Al also tried teaching me more about crochet but I was never any good at crafts and gave up on it after making just a blanket and a scarf for my stuffed animals. Maybe if I had tried harder I could've gotten better at it, but I doubt it - I definitely did not inherit the craft genes.
2 comments:
I love the family memories that are built around special occasions like Thanksgiving. It's cool how you can so vividly remember all of those great things.
I have a couple of things I always remember about Thanksgiving from when I grew up. Both of my grandfathers had passed away, but I remember that my Grandmothers would come out to our house and we'd watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Us kids would still be in our pj's and would cuddle up with them.
The other memory was that my mom would always make the stuffing by buying uncut loafs of bread that we would cut into strips and then we'd use a hand crank grinder to grind it all up for the stuffing..
Thanks for sharing your memories with us all!
Your Thanksgiving memories sound so nice. We didn't really watch the parade until recently, like the past 4 years. I keep wondering what kind of stars were in it when I was a kid. I never knew my grandfathers either. They died like 2- 4 years before I was born.
It's great that you made the stuffing the old fashioned way. I've always loved mom's stuffing but she gets the bags of stuffing cubes.
I forgot to mention having to sit at the kids table until I was about 12 or 13. I'm glad that you enjoyed my memories, it's fun sharing them.
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