The turkey is now for sandwiches and, if i can figure out how to do it, turkey hash with giblets to be served on biscuits, all in my mother’s style.

It’s Saturday night of Thanksgiving weekend. Well, not really: When i escaped from watching  “Elf” with the high fashion decorators, i went to my too-cool-to-sit in-go-outside-retreats or in-my-garage-escape, to the living room where i like to read, contemplate, and occasionally tap away on this infernal machine. But i went to sleep contemplating. So it’s  now Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.

The stockings are hung not exactly by the chimney with care, but close. i mean they are on the credenza next to the tree. Okay there are two on each end of the mantel. That counts doesn’t it?

You must understand i have no input in this. i have learned over the years that when there are two women involved in the decorating for Christmas, i needed to put up the tree, cart in the forty bins of decoration and get the hell out but remain close enough i can hear and then comply as the “go get it” man. For you see, i would hang all of the stockings on the mantel. After all, i am old and consequently, old fashioned.

But one can’t hang the stockings from the mantel when those two women have decorated all over. And the Santa doll must be moved for me to have a fire or for Santa to come down the chimney. i wonder if he will understand. Well, he does have Mrs. Claus, perhaps a daughter. i wonder where he might go when the decorating is going on. Ahh, if only i had a reindeer stable.

So i retreated to the minor decoration of the  living room goofy guy retreat. And i contemplated, at least until i dozed off. i thought about how old men can lock themselves into roles. i try not to lock myself into anything. Oh, i’ve locked myself out of a lot of places — the mini-van running incident on the first tee at Rancho California remains a legend among the Order of the Curmudgeons (that’s the group established at FMG, Friday Morning Golf, an event running since 1991). That’s why we have a secret key hidden well, outside the house. But locking into role is easier. We don’t even know it’s happening. My major objection is it keeps me from thinking on my own. It is hardest for me to refrain when i started reminiscing, thinking about how things used to be, how i wish they were still the way it was, not how it is.

Some things, however, don’t change. For example, the Order of the Curmudgeons really hasn’t changed all that much in over thirty years (we unofficially were curmudgeons before FMG). And we have our leader,  Marty Linville, here after the Black Friday round to prove it. The fez was awarded several years ago during our big Order of the Curmudgeon celebration at Pete and Nancy Toennies Coronado home. It was perfectly clear that the Grand Whiner of the Order of the Curmudgeons would have to be Marty.  Pete and i jointly came up with the idea — as usual Shreq and Donkey will forever argue about who had the original idea — but Pete did all of the legwork. Yeah, we are pretty much the same. We almost have to be the same  and as we have repeated our many Curmudgeon Legends so much to each other, they are pretty well emblazoned on our brains.

But change is all around us. Can’t stop it. It amazes me we can’t seem to accept that and rather than trying to make things better for now and the future, we either attempt to change change by retreating in the past or spend our time crying about all of the sins the other side, whatever that other side is or was, committed in the past.

The decorators and i were celebrating change earlier in the day before the decorating began in earnest, even though it was two days early. Younger daughter Sarah turns thirty-one tomorrow. Thirty-One! She is beautiful and has been invaluable to her parents during this COVID thing. Her big changes are still ahead, and her dad is proud of her. Sarah hasn’t locked herself into role, and even at her age, that is difficult.

She asked to have her birthday lunch at Coasterra on Harbor Island. It’s a wonderful place, outside dining with wonderful views and great food. We had a delightful lunch celebrating the change. We laughed a lot. i have four reasons for my happiness. It seems all four are happy, which makes me happy: Maureen, Sarah, Blythe, and Sam (Jason, you and i are grown men, so we don’t count, and i’m sure, like me, you are happy when Blythe and Sam are happy.

Here are my two of my happy’s this Thanksgiving.

As we were dining, i looked toward the San Diego skyline. I locked myself into role. i began to whine with my wine to the decorators., “It’s changed,” i moan., “i remember when the county admin building and the Hotel El Cortez were the two highest buildings (you can’t see them in the photo: they are dwarfed or hidden by the high rise condos and office buildings). The Gaslamp wasn’t a tourist attraction,” i added, “There were some great restaurants with lots of charm right in the middle of the blight. i remember getting propositioned while at a stoplight back then.” Hmm, i stopped there. Maybe, just maybe, all change isn’t bad. i looked again. The San Diego skyline change ain’t all that bad:

It was somewhere along those thoughts last night when my contemplation led to nodding off. i awoke to the downward jerk of my head as the doze hit. The fire was warm, but it was time for me to go to bed a bit early. After all, old men may not take change well, but boy, oh boy, we can sleep well if we don’t worry about change.

i did. Sleep well, that is.

Today, i feel much better and will feel better yet when i go for my walk. My doc keeps admonishing me not to run. “Walk,” he encourages. Down the hill from us is open space. The city hasn’t deigned to keep the hiking, horse riding path maintained to the top of our hill. i used to walk down and up and down and up from there. Stopped for a while. But with the doc’s encouragement, i took the neighborhood sidewalks to an access. i walked up. The hill in the background is where our home is. If you take a microscope, you might find our flag flying.

Eventually, i will get to the top, survey the Southwest corner, and feel good about change. You see this path leads to the mountains. There are old homes, Kumeyaay lands of the high desert, new developments, then the mountains, and a path to change for the better…if all sides quit drawing lines in the sand, locking and loading, but instead, sit down and talk about what is right and good for all of us.

It can be done.

It’s been a rather grand Thanksgiving, 31st Birthday party, and 31st anniversary of my completing Navy active duty.

i hope yours was wonderful as well.

Well, it ain’t over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go. The horse may know the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow, but we ain’t gonna be on that sleigh this year.

As i have listed probably to the limits of your boredom, i have experienced Thanksgiving in many ways, but not like this one. It will be Maureen, Sarah, and me. Oh, sister Patsy and nephew Mike will drop by to pick up their share of the dinner. But when we sit down to that dinner, it will be three of us. Alone.

This pandemic stuff has given me a lot of time, perhaps too much, to think about the meaning of Thanksgiving. i began sending out some messages to special friends and family, thanking them for what they meant or have done for me: gave up when i realized i was going to be writing those things well into next week. And man, i gotta go play some golf, not enough time.

My last “Thanksgiving” post for this year will be tomorrow (maybe). But tonight, the three of us in our own weird way will be at peace on Thanksgiving Eve.

With much grunting, groaning, and disagreement along with a few surprises, like i need a new egg knock-off grill, i have prepped the ill grill for smoking the turkey tomorrow. i also have taken a five-gallon paint bucket, cleaned it to perfection (after all, it used to hold paint) placed the turkey in it, put in all of my magic and always off-the-cuff ingredients, and filled it with water. Now getting that bucket with that turkey and the water out to the garage ain’t no piece of cake. But with Sarah’s help and a complete space-condensing rearrangement of the contents, got the bucket in there.

i’ll pull it out early tomorrow morning and start the smoking process. It’ll be ready to go in the early afternoon — of course, if i don’t screw it up.

But tonight, i started the fire in the hearth, and made my version of an old fashion.

i discovered this version in Seattle in 1980. As current operations officer of Amphibious Squadron Five, i had flown to brief the captain and his Coast Guard cutter about their role in an Amphibious Landing Exercise at Camp Pendleton (there is a rather amazing story about that i will share later…if i ever get around to it). i brief the captain and his key personnel and checked into a Sheraton down town, i don’t remember exactly where.

It was late. i just wanted to have a drink and retire to my room, perhaps order a sandwich there. i did not want to go to the big, crowded, noisy fancy bar. As i walked toward the elevator, i passed a kiosk, a bar with about four seats. There was a guy at one end, finishing his drink and paying. i sat at the other end. The bartender came over and asked what i would like to drink.

She was a pleasant looking, middle-age woman who smiled when she asked. i responded with my own question, “What would you recommend?” She smiled and said, “An old fashion, I make a good one.”

“Well, let’s do it,” i said. Then, i watched her stir the powdered sugar into a small amount of water, then add the whiskey. She took a quarter slice of orange and maraschino cherries and muddled them. She sprinkled some bitters on top. put in a couple of ice cubes, add a bit of water and served.

i was enchanted.

The old fashion was good. \

i’ve been making mine like that for nearly forty years. i have had many old fashions, special, they say. i like them if they are done well, but generally avoid them in restaurants and bars because they are tough to make right.

That lady in that kiosk would smile tonight if she tasted mine.

i sit by the fire after Maureen’s lentil soup and pan bread have gone down splendidly. The fire will need one or two more logs for the evening. i plan to watch the San Diego State Aztecs play UCLA in basketball tonight…if i can stay awake. i am at peace, and at my age, peace can make me sleepy.

i will rise pretty early, set up the smoker, carry the turkey around from the garage, and begin smoking. With the “kamado” grill, it will take less time than the old way.

Throughout the day, i plan to thank folks. In fact, i start here. Thank all of you who read this for being my friend. Your friendship is important to me.

Thank you.

i wanted to post old posts or Democrat columns about Thanksgiving this week. When i found this one from three years ago, i confess i got a lump in my throat. Ben Regis died last month well into his 100th year on this earth. He is Nancy Toennies’ dad. i miss him. But it was a wonderful Thanksgiving. And this post sums up my thoughts on a terrific bunch of guys and their wives who  remain as close as brothers…total curmudgeons, who take being called “asshole” as a complement. And as Rod Stark wrote in an email about our Black Friday round two days from now, being in that group is a blessing for which i’m thankful.

The Thanksgiving weekend is winding down with Saturday football rivalries, which out beloved sports media has blown all out of proportion again. The Santa Ana, which brought about one of the warmest, if not the warmest turkey day in recorded thermometer readings history. Christmas…er, holiday decorations are blooming all over. And i’m rededicating myself to get through this Christmas season and our annual trip to Signal Mountain without gaining twenty pounds. Fat chance. No pun…oh yes there was a pun intended.

But before we kick Christmas preparations into high gear, i have one more thanks to give. It’s sort of general, but it’s really specific.

As i was driving home from Friday Morning Golf yesterday, it occurred to me i have a second family, not an official one of course, but no less real. There’s this group of men i’ve been lucky enough to have run into over the last thirty-eight years. We are not an official organization although we have made fun of ourselves in that regard, calling ourselves the curmudgeons, even having a celebration of the “Order of the Curmudgeons” and unanimously electing Marty Linville as “The Grand Whiner” culminating with anointing him with a fez embroidered with the group name and his moniker.

The closest thing we’ve got as a regular  meeting is that Friday Morning Golf outing, taking place every early morning of the fifth day of the week since the spring of 1991. But the closeness of the group goes far beyond just golf and nineteenth hole beer every Friday. It has expanded. Our wives have been included. Others have become satellite members or  are totally included, nearly always through golf. There is no limitations on group affiliation except for the requirement to have a very thick skin. No one escapes razzing, name calling, put downs, and must laugh at themselves along with the rest of the group, only to plot how to get revenge in the same manner.

The initial affiliation came in 1979. Pete Toennies, Al Pavich, and i ended up on the Amphibious Squadron Five staff for a WESTPAC deployment. Afterwards, we all kept rotating in and out of the Southwest corner, and never missed a chance to get together, nearly always golf was involved somehow, although racquetball and running were also joint ventures. And oh, i forgot, we partied, dined, and consumed quite a bit of adult beverages. You see, that was an intrinsic part of our culture.

JD Waits, who later was my shipmate on the USS Okinawa and roommate in perhaps the most perfect apartment and setting for single men since the beginning of bachelorhood, became part of the group. Of course, we blew that and both became engaged and married instead of fulfilling the potential that condo with a boat slip occupied by JD’s twenty-five foot Cal promised.

Then, during our last tour of active duty, Rod Stark and the aforementioned grand whiner, Marty Linville, became my golfing partners on weekends (the gestation of Friday Morning Golf). Pete Thomas was also at the Amphibious School in Coronado and has become a permanent satellite member.

Jim Hileman, whom i met through Maureen at our wedding, is also a significant contributor and full-fledged member, often one of the primary…er, excuse the French, shit tossing initiators of the curmudgeons. He fits in.

Our golfing skills have eroded. For that matter, so have our racquetball and running skills taken a hit. Most of us have had major surgery or some damnable condition that comes with growing old. But we still play every Friday.

But it’s much more than that. We could call it camaraderie, esprit de corps, even friendship, but we don’t spend much time fooling with that kind of name-calling. Yet there is no doubt in my mind each one of us would help out any of the others of us if needed, and sometimes not even if needed.

But as i drove toward home and a major NORP, another Friday requirement driven by the early, early morning round, i thought about the guy and his wife who deserves special mention from me.

When Pete and i returned from that 1979-80 deployment, i was a renewed bachelor having gone straight from Texas A&M to Hobart, Tasmania, Australia to join the deployment in progress. i had no place to live except on the ship. Pete and Nancy didn’t think that was right, and they insisted i stay in their small home on I Avenue in Coronado. i stayed in the makeshift bedroom, which had been the dining room for about a month before finding my own place. Pete and i played innumerable evening games of racquetball, ran together, and i was even invited to play Sunday beach volleyball with Pete’s SEAL buddies.

The three of us have wandered in and out of each other’s lives since then with Maureen joining us after our marriage. We’ve spent numerous vacations together, usually staying in one of their time-shares. The results have been legends unmatched with laughter.

The Toennies have helped either Maureen, myself, or our family members on too many occasions. Pete has instigated a number of actions to gain employment for friends and family…and the two of them are always there.

As they were two days ago. Our plans for the holiday were somewhat discombobulated by a number of factors. We were leaning on going out, but once again, Pete and Nancy intervened, asking us to join them. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving. Nancy’s 97-year old father and former UCLA quarterback and pro-player (and Georgetown basketball player), an interesting man with interesting tales, Ben Regis, and Dan, the Toennies’s son. Sarah joined us.

Damn near a perfect day.

And i really couldn’t ask for more. Thanks, Pete and Nancy…for everything.

With all of the craziness going on, it’s easy to forget what is going to be here Thursday. Ours has been even crazier in that when Maureen felt ill last week, the three of us went and were tested for COVID. It took a couple of days before our results came back negative. i was dreading two weeks, which some time ago, i had heard was the length for getting the results. But even four days can change your idea about self-quarantining. Still, we stuck to it because we simply did not want to endanger anyone else even if there was only a slight chance we would be doing so. Crazy.

But we, especially moi, didn’t forget. i like Thanksgiving, the whole idea, regardless of which history to which you subscribe about its beginnings or how your celebration might differ from others. It is still about giving thanks. So i’m going back and posting some past thoughts about Thanksgiving. This one was written during the 2016 Thanksgiving week.

Have a wonderful turkey day…and give thanks.

Note: the photo below was taken that Thanksgiving.

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.