First off I gotta tell you this is prob’ly nothing you haven't heard a million times before but when I feel like talkin' nobody's gonna stop me. So y'all that's fed up with it might just as well leave the room. Might just as well. I'll clear my throat and give you a minute. I know I'm supposed to be all grateful and thankful but instead I'm all spiteful and irritable about Thanksgiving.I'm gonna tell you 'bout how it is with my poor white trash family. T'be honest they're not that poor but the extra two cents worth doesn't change a thing.
My uncle Bubba still roasts an entire pig in a hole he dug out back of his home and my Uncle Pete (the refined guy with the gold pinky ring and pictures of Tyrone Power in his living room), won't let anybody eat the pecans til the comp'ny comes. Just who the hell does he think we are?
My mama, She's a yee-haw, campfire singin', plate breakin', mother-is-only-half-a-word-sayin' pirate livin' in a trailer. Mama don't take no mess. If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. You better run when you see me smile kinda momma.
How did my mother turn into a loud cowboy? It reflects poorly on me, I think. I feel inside that I am a highly developed person, a person of quality, a sensitive girl.
Every year we all go runnin' over to Bubba and Joy’s house and the drinkin' starts in at about ten a.m. along with the football on the teevee. The general feeling of holiday cheer combines with mimosas, evolvin' into screwdrivers and then scotch 'n' sodas and later into some kind o' wine which eventually is replaced by a "strong milk punch" all making up the kind of day it's going to be--right through to tomorrow--when the backs of hands will be against the fronts of foreheads and there's sure to be moanin'.
"Ma gawd, ma cup runneth ova", says my Mama, flirty like. "Somebody help me with these greenbeans."
Early on they put me in charge of all the children because they know I'm the only one's gonna keep 'em alive given the circumstances of this event. I make 'em leave the house for out back to shield 'em from the carnage of football and the sights and sounds of the dangerously innebriated. For a while we all roll around in the dirt with our dogs in order to get the taint off of our finery. Then like every year, I have the tradition of the Bone Dubbing, which is the only holy moment of the horrid holiday. I get our travel box of Milk Bones from out of the car and take out one bone and every sorry dog in the yard gets to salivating and kids and dogs are all prancin' and runnin' around me and I bang on the happy red box with that bone and shout:
CI-VIL DIS-O-BE-DI-ENCE IS AN OXY MORON
CI-VIL DIS-O-BE-DI-ENCE IS AN OXY MORON
and no kids or dogs have the slightest idea what it's all about but I repeat it five times and and who can, follows along, also repeating. Then I touch everyone's head with the magic insurrectionist's meat-infused sceptre and I hand each dog a perfectly intact Milk Bone and the kids all line up and get one too and I give the "go" signal with mine and we all eat 'em together.
Soon as I'm sure we're all done, I shout again: "THANKS BE T'GOD FOR ALL IS FORGIVEN... AND THIS IS THE END OF OUR RITUAL.". But look at what happens every year, even when we wait until dark: go back inside and people are fightin' and hungry and all agitated, and dinners not ready for another hour at least.
It's just your basic normal Thanksgiving. Husbands and wives imagine they're single and childless and free. Children fantasize that one day they'll find their real parents. I wonder how long it will take to simply die from the shame.
