This was begun Wednesday, continued last night. i had to stop a couple of times to wipe away the tears.

The turkey is smoked and carved. Maureen is close to finishing the other dishes. We will have her sister Patsy, our nephew Mike, and Marti,a very nice lady who shares a home with Patsy over for the dinner. They will arrive shortly. i am very happy with the assembly. It will be a nice day.

But there is a dark cloud hanging over me.

It has been three days since it ended.

i don’t see it returning.

i, along with Fred Russell, J.B. Leftwich, and Bill Frame are dismayed at the end of an era.

Maureen and i made a hard decision and cancelled our subscription to The San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper this past week. Our last paper was delivered Monday.

i have been reading a newspaper or two or three since my earliest days. i suspect it was around four years old when i started looking at the comics. By seven, i was actually reading them. A year or so later, i started reading the sports pages and became enrapt with Fred Russell’s column “Sidelines” on the left hand side of the Nashville Banner’s front sports page.

The Banner was the afternoon newspaper. It leaned toward the liberal Southern Democrat persuasion(if there was such a thing) . The morning paper was the Nashville Tennessean. It was of the conservative Southern Democrat persuasion. i didn’t care. i was devoted to Fred Russell, Dudley “Waxo” Green, and George Leonard. Politics were not part of my world. Again to quote Bob Seger, “i wish i didn’t know now what i didn’t know then.”

i read the Banner and the weekly Lebanon Democrat. J. Bill Frame, our neighbor was the publisher and editor of that paper until i left for the Navy.

Going away didn’t stop me from reading newspapers. In my first tour on the USS Hawkins out of Newport, RI, one of my greatest pleasures was getting the New York Times Sunday edition, eating breakfast and with the Times‘ sections spread all over the living room floor, sitting there on the rug with my coffee and spending the entire morning reading the paper.

When i went to carrying Koreans to Vietnam and back, i grabbed the Navy Times and read it cover to cover. Also, my grandmother would send me the weekly “Route 7 News” by Mrs. Wesley Thompson. i was enthralled with Mrs. Thompson’s down home news.

And then, as i was contemplating how to return to sports writing after my Navy obligation was served, one of the best guys around, John (Yanch) Johnson, offered me a job at his family’s newspaper, The Watertown Daily Times in Watertown, New York.

It was an incredible two years there. i was the understudy to Jack Case before taking over the sports editor when he retired. i was up to my neck in sports. We covered all of the local sports, college sports, introduced me to college hockey. When Jack retired, i ran a full page of photos of Jack with luminaries of the 30’s and 40’s: Lou Gehrig, Sonja Henie, Max Schmeling, and Ray Robinson — Jack gave Robinson his moniker when, after an amateur bout Jack visited the victor’s dressing room and stated, “Ray, you are as sweet as sugar.”

i was immersed in the new and old of sports journalism. The Watertown Daily Times and the Sunday New York Times were intrinsic for my living — and there was something wonderful about sitting in that upstairs apartment reading the paper with five or six feet of snow outside.

Later, there was a short period of time when i was in newspaper heaven. In the mid-1980’s, we were getting the Los Angeles Times’ San Diego edition in the morning. In the afternoon, we got the San Diego Tribune. i felt…educated.

But the LA paper for San Diego went away. The Tribune was merged with the Union and became a morning composite, The San Diego Union Tribune. Original owners died. The paper was sold. Money for the corporations or major gazillionaires used what was left for their purposes, not for newspaper journalism as i knew it. Finally, the latest sale went to a corporation, much like the latest owners of the Democrat. Minimal staff, minimum news, financial thinking i don’t understand is apparently their guideposts.

Oh yes, the cost of reading a real newspaper has gone through the roof…for not much newsprint.

So we ditched it and are using…yep, you guessed it, the cloud, for our news. To bring me some succor for such a wound, we are getting the Sunday edition of the New York Times. i am blown away, even with this as the sports section has become a separate entity. i read superb journalism, wishing i could match their knowledge, their research, and the ability to put words together.

My era of the daily newspaper is over for us. We’ll get by, but it’s been a part of our morning ritual for over thirty years: the morning paper with breakfast and coffee.

And now, i have to figure out what to use to start our evening fire in the hearth.

Another post from the past. There have many good ones, but this has a special place in my heart. From my Lebanon Democrat column in 2017, ten years after my grandson Sam was born.

Christmas is the big family deal. Several of mine have been away from family. Navy, you know.

But i’ve pretty much blown the roof off when it comes to missing Thanksgiving with the family. Actually, it’s not that much. i have spent six Thanksgivings with shipmates either at sea or in some foreign port where whatever Thanksgiving there is is celebrated is on-board.

They were okay. Bittersweet and oh so lonely amongst my Navy friends, but okay.

There also have been about four or five where the celebrating has been with just my wife. This duo celebration seems to have increased in the last decade. That happens when you live in the Southwest corner and are growing older. i have found these to be almost as nice as the ones with large groups of family and friends. After all, i can be happy anytime i am spending time with just Maureen.

i like Thanksgiving. It is not an absolutely silly requirement to honor someone when we should be honoring those people all of the time, like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, President’s Day, Neighbor Day, Sibling Day, Fifth Cousin Day, Trash Man Day, and Lord knows what other group day. Thanksgiving doesn’t have the somber celebratory tone of Easter. It is not one of those national things we have hyped up to give everyone free time to play instead of work on Fridays or Mondays. It is not celebrating the birth of our nation like the Fourth, or honoring those who served like Memorial Day or Veterans Day.

It is not like Halloween, which has become sort of weird party for the kids to get all of the things they shouldn’t eat and now get them at some school or church instead of hitting all of the homes gone gonzo decorative with tombstones and bones of body parts sticking out of the yard — has the number of kids stopping by your house for “trick or treat” dwindled to a handful like it has at ours? — Still Halloween is fun for the kids and the kids in us so i’m okay with it.

And it’s not like Christmas, the big daddy of them all. Celebrating the birth of a savior, having as many family together as possible, waiting for the gift openings, hoping for snow, singing carols, giving each other more than just presents. Yeh, that one is special.

Thanksgiving is one i really like as well. It has morphed into a thing of itself from those pilgrims and indigenous folks getting together to thank each other (what a concept, huh?) with a big meal. Thus far, it hasn’t reach the massive ad campaign of just about every other holiday. There’s this appreciation factor that may be in the other celebrations but seems to get lost.

My favorite Thanksgivings runs the gamut of different settings.

One away from home that sticks in my mind is the one in Seoul, Korean, 1970. i was with Blythe’s mother’s family in their comfortable senior officer housing on base. The Lynch’s were always great at throwing parties and this one sticks out. We got up at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night to watch the Texas, Texas A&M football game. Blythe’s mother and i weren’t even engaged yet. The Lynch’s were allowing me respite from my cycle of carrying Korean troops back and forth between Pusan and Vietnam.

Then there was the one in Naples, 1972. In August, i had returned to active duty and flown to meet my new ship, the USS Stephen B. Luce (DLG 7) a month after Blythe was born. i don’t even remember the onboard celebration, but i do remember the loneliness when i called from the Naples base phone exchange and talked to wife and family. There’s not many things more lonely that hanging up a phone late on Thanksgiving night after talking to the mother of your infant daughter.

Then, there was the one on Yosemite. Man, that was a some feast. We were anchored off of Masirah, Oman (a total of 55 days at sea). Our supply department did us up fine. We even had that Martinelli’s sparkling cider (white) and apple-grape (red) instead of wine. That wardroom of forty-four officers celebrated just like we were family…because we were.

Then there were the quiet ones with Maureen. We always picked one of our favorite restaurants. And we thanked each other for being each other and together. Doesn’t get much more thankful than that.

The Tennessee Thanksgivings will remain special in my memory. They were in all of the places of family. There were those at our house. The old folks and the older children were crammed around the dining room table. Before the family room had been added, the younger kids ate on a card table in the breakfast niche, then later at the oak table in the breakfast room. The womenfolk cooked like there was no tomorrow and it was all good.

Then there was the same going-ons when we held our celebration at the Hall’s home on Wildwood and later Waggoner. We would go to Red Bank in Chattanooga where the Orr’s hosted the feast of Prichard women, almost like the two in Lebanon, but quite a bit larger (we all sat at the dining room table) and a bit more elegant. Then on numerous Thanksgivings, we would travel to Rockwood to be with Mama Orr. It was an incredibly fascinating Victorian labyrinth of a home with a downhill across the street where we would find large pieces of cardboard and slide down (or without cardboard simply roll and roll and roll down that hill.

Ah, memories.

But far and away, there was one Thanksgiving i love the most. Here. The Southwest corner. 2007. Sam was seven months old. His first Thanksgiving. My family was together. Maureen’s sister and her family joined us. i smoked a turkey. It was a warm and dry day, not the full-blown beyond hot and dry today, but nice. Our family was together. That was enough.

Later today, we will drive over the bay bridge to Coronado. We will celebrate with Pete and Nancy Toennies and their family. After all, we are about as close to family with the Toennies as anyone can get.

It will be a nice way to give thanks.

i hope everyone i know has a wonderful Thanksgiving in their own way. i hope all of us will stop for just a minute. Not watching football. Not eating a ton of turkey. . Not pontificating about the state of the world and our country. Just pausing to give thanks for what we have had and what we have.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.