It’s Thanksgiving time again. We are reminded that we should be thankful and grateful at this time of year for everything the Good Lord has provided us.
Once again we are really excited because we’ll be with our daughter Meghan, her husband Terry and their son Liam, (our grandson).
It’s the fourth Thanksgiving for the special little guy. I’ve been thinking back recently of some of the Thanksgivings we had when as I was a small child, of those as a pre-teen, some when I was a teenager and even those on into college.
As I’ve mentioned before, I was the oldest of 19 grandchildren on my mother’s side of the family. Thanksgiving was a big deal at my grandfather Doc and grandmother Lynch’s house each year.
It was always a large gathering at their home on Northwest 32nd Street in Oklahoma City. They had a huge, two-story, red brick house, that included a basement, and it was capable of handling the number of people who began showing up in the early afternoon.
My dad was a hunter and he told me I was sitting in a duck blind with him some at age 4. I can recall hunting ducks with him on some Thanksgiving mornings up on the Cimarron River near Dover. We’d be there in the blind usually by sunrise.
I can recall one specific Thanksgiving hunt when he shot three mallards one morning. He was wearing waders and had to chase one down so it wouldn’t get away.
What I would give today to have a video of that. When I was 12, we stopped hunting ducks because we had a Brittany bird dog and we started hunting quail. From then on, it was quail we hunted on Thanksgiving mornings.
There was one stipulation from my mother about both the duck and quail hunts on Turkey Day mornings.
We had to be back in time for the large gathering at Grandmother and Doc Lynch’s home for Thanksgiving dinner that started out being around 2 or 3 o’clock. Dad was well aware of that and he knew we were not to be late.
As our families grew and the gatherings became slightly larger, time of the Thanksgiving dinner was pushed to a little later in the afternoon. Still, our hunting those mornings was no excuse for not being on time.
As I grew older, as did my dad, we stopped the Thanksgiving morning hunts. Also, there were more days we could hunt quail so it became less important to go on Turkey Day.
The gatherings didn’t stop and continued up until the time of my grandfather’s death at the end of 1984 and my grandmother’s passing at the start of 1987.
By the way, hoping everyone has a great Thanksgiving Holiday. Eat lots of turkey and everything else that goes with it.