Down with Thanksgiving!

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0000

When I was 10 I lived with my mom and dad and three brothers and a sister in a town of about 45,000 on the gulf coast of Florida, on the Manatee River, a brackish tidal river that began in springs to the east and emptied into Tampa Bay.

I don't remember everything that happened. Memories change. But I remember one day in the summer of probably 1963 a typewritten page appeared on the refrigerator. At the top it said, PROCLAMATION. It said that henceforth, it being that the washing of dishes was a task unfairly foisted upon certain individuals and not others, this being not fair, etc., HENCEFORTH each child was to be allotted one stainless steel drinking glass, each to be of a distinct and different color, and each child was henceforth to be responsible for his or her own drinking glass and no other and that throughout the day when any child under the jurisdiction of this PROCLAMATION wished to have a drink of water he or she was to wash and reuse his or her own glass and no other.

My mother had begun making such proclamations right after she started going to work and wasn't around to personally supervise our caucus.

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Down with Thanksgiving!