When I was little, we spent just about every Thanksgiving in Baxley, Georgia. My mom’s aunts and uncles all lived down there, and everyone – everyone – would congregate at my Aunt Millie and Uncle Al’s farmhouse for the holiday. It was phenomenal, and some of my strongest memories are from those times.
We would see family that we didn’t see at any other time of year, and they naturally would all rave about how big we had gotten since the year before. (That applies to the children….not so much the adults.) Aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents….all jammed into one house. There were so many of them that every year on the way down, you could hear my parents going over the roster in the front seat of the van: “All right….so, it’s Aunt Millie and Uncle Al, Uncle Harold and….who? Right…Aunt Virginia. Uncle Murray and Aunt…Jane. Got it. There’s Anna and Heather and Rebecca….and the boys are….hold on….Asa and…what’s his name?” Every year. That little review was good for all of us.
Once we got there, my sisters and I would play outside in the cold, noses red and running, hands cold and tingling, until mealtime. We would swing on the swings, stand around on the dock and *maybe* go fishing, slide down blue tarps draped over hay bales, ride horses, feed sheep, taunt roosters….It was wonderful. When we got too cold, we’d wander over to the fire the men had built to warm up for awhile, run inside to get something to drink, and head back out.
Oh, and sometimes we would get to pose in front of something the men and boys had killed earlier in the day, like maybe a rattlesnake.
My family and I would sleep in a camper on the farm, all 5 of us crammed into a tight little space out in the front yard. We would practically trip over each other inside, and would have to go inside the house to use the bathroom, and we had to use an old space heater to warm everything up…..but we loved it. Absolutely loved it. For a little kid, it was just about as fantastic as it could get.
When it came to the food, wow. So much to eat. I remember the smaller cousins and I all sitting at the kids’ table and sneaking back into the kitchen over and over to get more and more rolls and butter.
After the meal, we’d play games and laugh and watch movies in front of the fire. I think there were about 5 years in a row where the feature presentation was one Indiana Jones movie or another. Still today, when I smell a fire in a fireplace somewhere, it takes me back to Baxley.
Those were some of my favorite times.
Happy Thanksgiving. Make some memories.
