I Feel A Story Coming On About Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

The last few nights, Mark and I have enjoyed watching ‘The Dust Bowl’ on PBS, and in an odd way, it makes me miss my parents; I think because the show is based in the decades of their youth. I hear some accents that sound familiar; some phrases that I grew up hearing, and I fondly recall that sense of home that feels so familiar, but is now so far away. While watching the program about the terribly ravaged areas in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Colorado, my mind goes back to some of the stories about how my parents grew up, and how desperately hard it was for my grandparents to provide basic necessities for their families. One thing mentioned in the show was that the exodus to California was felt as an embarrassment because so many had suffered so greatly and could no longer meet their obligations, nor even put food on the table. Humbled and humiliated, they travelled West to find a place that was touted as a land of plenty, but the Depression travelled with them and had arrived in California before they did, so yes, it was a better place, but life was still hard.

My father’s ancestors were the mountain people of the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, having migrated there via Virginia after living on the East Coast , some since the 1600s. They were English, escaping religious persecution; they were Scottish and Irish, escaping countries of hardship and unjust rule. They were all looking for a better life and came with the determination born of desperation. Work was life and life meant work. My father told me heart wrenching stories about my grandfather’s efforts to provide for his family of eleven children – sharecropping, logging, carpentry, farming, mill work. Hard physical labor that sometimes paid off, and sometimes, did not. He decided one time to grow a large crop of watermelons, believing that they would sell easily. Who doesn’t love a good melon when it’s hot outside? Depression Era shoppers might have wanted to enjoy one, but could not. He couldn’t sell them. He eventually backed his wagon up to a steep hillside and threw them over. All of them. He used a mule to farm the land he rented as a tenant farmer. His axe was a precious tool to him and it was well cared for. (His Irish temper flared if that blade ever touched the ground.) The family picked cotton, even the younger children. I try to imagine my father as a young boy, dragging the cotton sack behind his slim frame, pulling the bolls off the plants. It makes me want to weep for what he and his siblings had to do just to live. Just to have food.

 

 The Plemons Boys: Tom, Gene and Wally

 

 It was in 1937 when Grandpa packed up the family and joined the long lines of cars driving West. They settled in the very northeast corner of California where there was logging and road building work for him, and it was a good place to settle the children who were still in the home.

My mother’s family lived in southern Missouri, also having migrated from the Carolinas: Scottish, Irish and German. My great grandfather farmed, surveyed, and went back to school to become a teacher, inspiring several of his children to do the same. His wife, my great grandmother, had lost her mother at age 12 and had been ‘farmed out’ to other relatives and neighbors until she married and then had twelve children of her own.

Matilda Condray Sutherlin, my Great Grandmother

My grandmother, their oldest child, believed in education and stressed the importance of it to her children, although her own education was limited because of the losses in her life. She wed at 18 to a handsome widower with three children. She then had five children of her own, three girls and two little redheaded boys. One little boy died as an infant and the other died at age four, due to the influenza. My grandfather was working in Oklahoma at the time and was so ill, he could not travel quickly enough to be there even for the funeral of his little son. Grandpa had tuberculosis, and he passed away when my mother was about 16 months old. They had moved to St. Louis, so Grandma was not near her parents for support and had to fend for her little family by herself. She worked in a laundry; she ironed clothes all day long. The family received assistance because she simply could not make ends meet; my mother remembered beans and beans and more beans for supper. My grandmother remarried in a short time and had another              daughter and another redheaded son. Georgie, her last little boy, was born with Down’s syndrome and passed away when he was seven or eight. Years later when my brother was born with a head of curly red hair, she wept.

I can’t help but be humbled when I reflect on the lives of those from whom I descend. Our home is a mansion. We flip a switch for heat; we turn a faucet for hot water - we have indoor plumbing! We only split wood to build a fire for ambiance and cozy atmosphere, and I think of my grandfather’s axe… If I’m not too good at splitting a piece of wood, I wonder what he would think of me. We have electricity and an iron that just needs to be turned on to heat; not set upon a hot stove fueled by coal. Every single time I iron clothes, I remember Grandma’s instructions – “Don’t run the iron backwards, it will make wrinkles. Iron the collar first and then the sleeves and then the body of the garment. Don’t melt the buttons.” If anyone knew how to do it right, it was she who spent hours and hours at it.

I can recall Thanksgiving celebrations at my Uncle Wally’s place in Ravendale, California, with many of my father’s family members there. We ate a wonderful meal and after dinner, pushed back the furniture to dance, and we laughed. As an innocent child, I thought it was just a fun holiday spent with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. I thought it was about the Pilgrims and turkeys and pumpkin pies that Mama made so well. I thought it was about the long car ride and playing games with my brothers and singing ‘Over the River and Through the Woods.’

The Plemons Family: Steve, Viola, Tom, Janet and Doug

1977

 

I was right. And I was wrong. The deeper meaning of the day is about giving thanks for those who walked before us, clearing the path by swinging an axe. For those who spent each day with sacrifice etched into their souls, pushing through heartbreak and never ever giving in to it. For the woman who taught me that the right way to do a task sometimes has only one way.

 

We will honor Thanksgiving with turkey and pie and cranberry sauce, and the family will gather to share in a day of feasting and celebration. I am immensely grateful that my own children and grandchildren will be there, and in each of their faces, there are glimpses of those others who have given us the better life for which they worked. Quietly, I will search for a moment when I can remember all of them who came before, and I will give thanks. I am proud of them, so very proud. This year, and every day, there is much to be thankful for.

Blessings to all.