The tradition of formally expressing one’s thanks for his/her many blessings dates back to the earliest colonial days. It was informally recognized when our new nation was organized, interrupted by President Jefferson who was concerned about the separation of church and state, and officially converted into a national holiday (the last Thursday of November) by President Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War. After a year with five Thursdays in November reduced the “shopping days till Christmas” to twenty-four, pragmatist President Franklin Roosevelt changed the annual date to the fourth Thursday of November, guaranteeing at least six more.
Its future appears to be positive, although there is a distinct possibility the “woke generation” will convert it into a national guilt trip day. After all, the comfortable way of life we currently enjoy is largely the result of exploitation of oppressed people. Squanto and the Wampanoag Native Americans helped the Pilgrims survive, and what did that get them? Let’s hope we can reverse that trend and continue to focus on the positive aspects of our life.
As is my normal routine, I am beginning this column while I listen to “Saturday Swing Session” on WQLN Erie. Sure enough, Phil Atteberry’s very first selection this evening is Bing Crosby singing “I’ve Got Plenty to Be Thankful For”; how is that for an appropriate coincidence? I remember Bing singing in it the movie “Holiday Inn”, eighty years ago. It is the perfect theme for this column.
I am, of course, thankful for all the important things – family, long life, good health, freedom, and all the “creature comforts”. I wake up in the morning in a warm house, remembering my father stoking the fire in a coal-fired furnace on a frigid morning. I waddle a few steps into my bathroom, remembering the trek through the chicken yard to the outhouse in the Oyler homestead where my father grew up. I turn a faucet handle to get water in the sink, remembering pumping rainwater from a cistern.
As for family, I am thankful for my parents and for my brother, who easily blurs the distinction between sibling and best friend. I am thankful for my children, their spouses, and my grand-children, but mostly for my wife, without whom “I’d have had a lonely life” (to quote Rod McKuen). I feel guilty that she is not here to share my blessings with me.
I am also thankful for a lot of trivial things, beginning with the bird feeder outside the bay window in my living room. Squirrel proof, thanks to a counterweighted feed gate, it dispenses sunflower seeds continuously to a wide variety of songbirds. It is supplemented by a container of suet impregnated by pepper (also squirrel proof). I really enjoy all the wildlife in our woods, but there is something extra-special in the way the birds interact at the feeder. I also intermittently maintain a suet cake on the tree we planted in memory of my wife; she was a passionate birdwatcher.
I am thankful for the six tablet-top baluster-back plank bottom chairs in my dining room. We believe they were made by an artisan in Mechanicsburg just before the Civil War, acquired new by the Oyler family, and have been in constant use for sixteen decades. How do you put a value on something like that? The fact that an antique has survived all those years is the true measure of its value. These chairs are my link to my Oyler ancestors; I am sitting in the same chair my great-grandfather, Adam Cook Oyler, sat in when he was young.
I am thankful for the large collection of house plants that I inherited from my wife. Dominant is a group of pots containing cuttings from Franklin, a member of the “cereus jamacaru” cactus family, that she and my daughter Sara bought at a garage sale about forty years ago. It grew so rapidly that it soon approached the ceiling; we had to cut off its top and stick it in another pot, then another and another. She also left us jade plants, “Christmas cactus”, and philodendron. At some point my daughter Elizabeth gave her an “Einstein begonia”, a descendant of cuttings from a plant Einstein cultivated in his later years at Princeton; it too has generated lots of cuttings. The collection of plants is one of many links to my wife; my “benign neglect” stewardship of them has been marginal at best.
I am thankful for my fireplace and the fact that I live in a location where it is permissible to burn logs in it. At this stage of life, my version of nirvana is located in my living room and includes my easy chair, a roaring fire in the fireplace, a stack of my favorite records on my phonograph, and a good book. The book is probably just a prop; more than likely I would close my eyes and doze. I suspect the attraction of the fire dates back millennia to our primitive ancestors.
I am thankful for today’s technology and the capability it gives us to communicate, to learn, and to be entertained. The synergistic compatibility of radio, television, laptop computers, and smart phones, coupled with the availability of digital media provides us with nearly unlimited power. I had pretty well concluded that there was so much old, classical material available that it didn’t matter that today’s product was inferior; then came along came “1883”, “Rings of Power”, and “Magpie Murders”, three instant classics.
I am thankful for regular lunches with old friends – Ninety-six-year-old Larry who has just lost his wife after seventy-three years of togetherness; ninety-two year old Don whom I’ve known since fourth grade; our Bridgeville High School Brunch Club; and Dravo buddies Ed and Bill (two young whippersnappers!).
And I am truly thankful for the group of readers who receive this column each week and justify its continuance, especially those who occasionally give me feedback.