LeeAnn is starting up a new meme called Monday Memory. She'll posit a question for people to answer. Sort of like the Coffee Talk lady did when she was getting viklempt(sp?). The first question is What Thanksgiving dinner is your family still talking about?"

Well, I don't have too many specific memories of Thanksgivings with one exception. I was spending Thanksgiving in New York with my Dad (parents divorced, Mom in Ocean City, Dad in Buffalo). Thanksgiving was at Uncle Jim's farm in Springville. That's rural country with long, long roads and many miles between anything you'd bother to look at. People drive fast. Very fast. (By the way, that's one of the two uncles I'm named after.) Most of us were at the farmhouse already with the ladies in the kitchen making up the lucious dinner (and drinking loads of wine) and the menfolk were watching football (and drinking loads of beer). The only people missing were Aunt Gail (Uncle Jim's wife) and uncle Bob (the family jester). (Uncle Bob is the other uncle I'm named after.)

The door opened and in came a sobbing Aunt Gail. She was totally distraught. It seems she had run over a 'possum at the bottom of the big hill down the road a piece. After much comforting and coddling (and a glass or two of wine) the gals managed to calm down Aunt Gail and they all repaired to the kitchen to complete the meal (and drink loads more wine).

Just as the kitchen door closed, the front door opened again and Uncle Bob walked in. He said in a (very) loud voice "I just saw the most horrible thing! Somebody hit an opossum down the hill. Poor thing was dragging itself along the shoulder of the road, all busted up. It would have been the saddest thing I ever saw except right after that I saw something even worse. 50 yards down the road, I guess where the thing got hit, there were seven little dead baby opossums. I guess the momma couldn't get off the road fast enough after it got hit and all the little ones got run over too."

The wailing cry that came out of the kitchen was absolutely heartbreaking. "Babies!? Oh, God! Babies too?!"

Aunt Gail had to be restrained at that point as she wanted to go out and rescue the wounded possum. It took quite some time to calm her down this time. It would have taken even longer but Uncle Bob finally took pity on her (or maybe realized that dinner was going to be ruined if somebody didn't get back in the kitchen) and confessed. He had actually arrived just minutes after Aunt Gail and had heard the commotion inside. He made up the whole thing about the wounded 'possum struggling along the roadside as well as the dead babies.

Now before you go biblical on Uncle Bob, you should know that he and Aunt Gail had a long history of pranking each other and she got him back really good a few days later. And on the plus side, she stopped moping about the possum after he fessed up. After all, moping is not conducive to plotting evil revenge and Aunt Gail was an eminently practical lady.

Posted by: Jim at 09:42 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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