As Gang Green Turns: The Misery Continues in Jets 10-6 Loss to Dolphins

Article first published as As Gang Green Turns: The Misery Continues in Jets 10-6 Loss to Dolphins on Blogcritics.

After losing a terrible game last week on the road against the Patriots, the New York Jets (9-4) and their fans were hoping for much better things against the Miami Dolphins (7-6) at New Meadowlands Stadium. Alas, it was not to be; even though the defense showed up this week, the offense once again seemed dazed and confused as the Jets lost 10-6.

The immediate focus has to be on quarterback Mark Sanchez, who was 17 for 44 for 216 yards. He has looked like he is making it up as he goes along, and the results are not pretty. Sanchez is fumbling, getting intercepted, and stumbling his way through these last two games. In the process, the Jets' hopes to take the division are now lost, and it is questionable whether they have what it takes to even make the playoffs now.

The bright spot of the day for head coach Rex Ryan was that his defense came back, looking less like the zombies from the AMC series The Walking Dead in last week's game and more like the highly touted "best" defense in football today. The problem is no matter how well the defense clicked, the Jets offense came down to two Nick Folk field goals.

To make matters worse, while the Jets were losing this one, the Patriots (11-2) were wiping up the field with the Bears (9-4) in an 36-7 victory. Surely there is no doubt after these last two weeks that the Pats are the best team in the NFL right now.

After the loss to the Pats last week, Ryan buried the game ball in a symbolic effort to say that loss was over and the team had to move on. Today the team did nothing to prove that they, and not the game ball, are six feet under. With a road game against the Steelers (10-3) looming next week, Sanchez and the offense better get themselves together or the season will be ostensibly lost.

 

As Gang Green Turns: The Mouth That Roared Gets Gored

Article first published as As Gang Green Turns: The Mouth That Roared Gets Gored on Blogcritics.

I have been trying (as I think most Jets fans have) to process the New York Jets 45-3 loss to the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football this week. "Trying" is the operative word here because it is difficult to accept such a horrific defeat.

Rex Ryan said, "We got our butts kicked" after the game, but that is only part of it. The fact is that his big mouth has roared too often, he has proclaimed far too many things, and the reality is so far from his boasting that it is now shockingly clear: Ryan's defense is a sham. He can have Darrelle Revis and Antonio Cromartie and say they are the best defensive backs in the game, but it is meaningless when there is no effective pass rusher on the team. It became clearer than ever in this game.

Partiots' quarterback Tom Brady seemed to have all the time in the world on Monday; meanwhile, Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez was getting the bum's rush all night. He was throwing interceptions and looking like a high school kid being thrown into a college game. Yes, it was that bad, folks.

The Jets failed on so many levels that there is no word -humiliating, disgraceful, pathetic among them - that can possibly describe how bad this game was for the Jets and their fans. Before the game Rex was shooting his mouth off about which was the better team; after this game it's clear not only that the Jets are not going to win their division but that they aren't even close to being in the same league as the Pats.

It's an ugly truth but it had to be said. As a Jets fan, I am wondering if I should even hope for them to make the playoffs as a wild card team. After the way they played Monday night, it would be better for them to sit home and watch the games and maybe learn something for next year.

 

The Night John Lennon Died

Article first published as The Night John Lennon Died on Blogcritics.

It is inconceivable to me that it has been thirty years since a maniac came out of the night and assassinated John Lennon. What's worse is it happened in my city. This was the place where John and the Beatles first broke into the American consciousness, and now in this his adopted city he was taken much too soon. I still can't even believe that he is gone, but his enormous contribution to music and his amazing spirit certainly lives on and on.










The night before John died I had what I've always thought was a foreshadowing of his death. I was on the phone with my friend Ralph. He was in the Air Force and home on leave. We were talking about how we were going to get together the next night to celebrate his return, and I was sitting on my sofa looking up at the shelf on my wall, where I had the four individual pictures of the Beatles that came with the White Album in frames. As I was talking with Ralph the frame with John's picture in it toppled off the shelf. Nothing precipitated this event: no rumble of the subway below, no bus going by outside, no helicopter flying low overhead. It just fell.

At the time I thought it was weird but nothing else. When I got off the phone I got up and put the picture back in place, staring briefly at John's face and remembering when I saw him in Manhattan a couple of years before. It the only the second time I had ever seen him in person (the first being when he walked on stage during an Elton John concert at Madison Square Garden). He had been walking down the street, hands in pockets, rather nonchalant and happy. When I saw him he looked at me, and he knew I recognized him even in his sunglasses and hat pulled down a bit. He gave me a little smirk and something like a nod, and I wanted to say something, but my tongue was infinitely tied in knots, and it is best I did not blurt out something stupid. John kept walking and so did I, my hands shaking for blocks. I had just seen John Lennon.

The next night Ralph and I met some friends in a bar in Queens in the shadow of Shea Stadium, where John and his mates once rocked the house. We were there to ostensibly watch Monday Night Football, but the bar was filled with people and music. It was decorated for Christmas, and there was a jovial mood filling the place.

We all talked and talked. Ralph told us about life in the Air Force. He was stationed in Greenland and he couldn't talk about this and that. We started talking about high school and various teachers, and the night went by very quickly. As it started getting late, our friends who had to work the next morning left. Ralph was on leave and I was in college and had no classes on Tuesday mornings, so we sat at the bar and started watching the football game.

Only a few minutes had gone by when there was a special news bulletin that broke into the program. The announcer spoke stiltedly as she said that there was word that John Lennon had been shot outside the Dakota Building. He was being rushed to the hospital. Ralph and I just looked up at the screen, and everyone in the bar stopped and stared at the screen with us.

The game came back on for a time. Someone pulled the plug out of the jukebox, and the patrons all crowded around the bar and watched the TV waiting to hear an update. I don't know how long it was until the next news bulletin came on, but the grim face of the news anchor Kaity Tong told it all. Before she spoke, the room was so quiet, I could hear the taps dripping behind the bar.

She confirmed that John Lennon had died at St. Luke's Hospital. I felt myself shaking, worse than when I had seen John on the street; I felt like I was convulsing. Ralph hung his head and stared at his hands. Behind me I could hear some of the girls crying, the men too, and the bartender who looked like a professional wrestler complete with bald head and tattoos kept wiping the tears from his eyes.

There wasn't anything left to do or to celebrate. Ralph and I put on our coats, walked outside, and stood in the cold quietly watching a big city bus go down the street. Ralph seemed to snap out of a trance and turned to me and shook my hand. We parted without words because there was nothing left to say.
I went home to my room and sat on the floor, pulling all my records out of the cabinet. I threw Sgt. Pepper on the turntable and listened to John sing those prophetic words, "I heard the news today, oh boy..." I looked at all the albums spread on the floor, and I cried some more as I was shaken by the hopefulness of their early photographs.

I leaned my head back and stared at the pictures on my shelf, especially the one of John that had fallen the night before. I didn't know all the reasons why this felt like the loss of my brother instead of a stranger whom I had fleetingly met. John Lennon was a celebrity, one of the biggest stars of all time, and yet I felt like it was a personal loss. I had invested so much time and energy in the Beatles and then later John (and to a lesser extent the other Beatles) in his solo career.

To those too young (or too old) to understand, I can only say that John meant something personal to me. He had touched my life, and so many lives, with his work. Perhaps it was because we perceived he stood for something we believed in deeply, like his message of peace and love for the world that we got through his music. On a very big planet with very big problems, John seemed to stand for those of us who had no voice, and he spoke and sang what we wanted and needed to be heard.

Today, thirty years later, I stare at the skyline of the city I have loved all my life, and I know that John loved it too. He felt at home in New York, free to wander the streets unencumbered by the celebrity that had once threatened to overwhelm him elsewhere. Here John was free to be himself and to be what he saw himself as in the end: a New Yorker.

The world has changed in these last thirty years, as has this city. Today people will mark John's passsng in many different ways, but the way I shall remember him is not through public displays or even to watch reports about him on the TV or the Internet. The way I will remember him is to listen to his music, to appreciate what made him occupy that special place in so many hearts around the world.










So on this day I'm going to put on my headphones and turn up the volume. As I listen to his songs, I will not think about that night he died, but about the life he lived. And I will remember that one special day when two New Yorkers passed each other on the street, and in that simple everyday moment there was an acknowledgement of everything I had ever felt in a simple smirk and nod of the head that let me know that John knew what he meant, not just to me, but to everyone whom he touched in life.

You are still missed, John Lennon. In pace requiescat.

Remembering Celebrations of St. Nicholas Day

Article first published as Remembering Celebrations of St. Nicholas Day on Blogcritics.

It has been many years since I enjoyed St. Nicholas Day parties as a boy, and with this being St. Nicholas Day Eve, I started reminiscing about this exciting time that my family sadly no longer celebrates each year.


My mother's side of the family is German, with a touch of French courtesy of my great grandmother who came from Alsace-Lorraine. They spoke a little German around the house, and I am left with a smattering of phrases I can still remember fondly like Das ist gut or Guten Morgen. One of my most cherished memories involves the day we called "Little Christmas," which fell on December 6th each year, which is the feast day of St. Nicholas.

We would gather at my Mom's sister's apartment when I was small. Aunt Margie would have the tree decorated and small gifts spread on the table. There would be snacks served like nuts, raisins, chocolates, and cream wafers accompanied by tall glasses of milk. She would put on Christmas records; usually Bing Crosby, Elvis, and Frank Sinatra were the chosen artists, and the room was filled with music, warmth, laughter, and love.

In those days my grandfather sat in a chair in the corner and smoked his cigarettes and drank whiskey, thinking nothing of secondhand smoke because no one knew about that then. We would each take our turns opening the gifts. They were always toys, and that was why we were most excited. There was a guarantee of no disappointments like the shirt or scarf we would inevitably get stuck with on Christmas morning.

It was the same every year. One year I got an astronaut GI Joe, another year it was Johnny West, and then General Custer. Another year I got a few small cavalry soldiers. These action figures were always a prelude to the bigger and more desired toys on our Christmas lists that Santa was no doubt feverishly working on at that moment up at the North Pole, even on his feast day.

I did understand that Santa went by several names: St. Nick, Kris Kringle, and Santa Claus. These were all one and the same person, but on this night St. Nick was all that mattered. Once the toy opening frenzy was done, my grandfather would tell stories about St. Nicholas back in Germany. Of course, Pop was a confidant of the jolly old elf (as well as the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, and the Tooth Fairy).

Pop's stories were sometimes a little scary, with St. Nick not coming down chimneys but through windows and doors. Instead of a jolly old elf, their was a bit of mischief in Pop's version of the man. While he was ostensibly looking for children's shoes to fill with small toys, candy, and chocolate, this St. Nick could get very angry. Each story featured his little malevolent streak, leaving coal in the shoes if a kid didn't believe in him, sparking the rear end of bad kids, and giving a hot foot to misbehaving adults. It got me thinking that I better be good or I could not only miss out on toys but also get a little hot in my pajama bottoms.

We had this party every year even if it was a school night until my grandmother passed away. This is when Aunt Margie moved in with us to help my mother care for my father's father. The parties shifted to our house for a time, but as we got older and lost the belief in the jolly old elf who came in a sleigh, they sadly ended.

I do recall this night with such happiness, as I do going to see Aunt Margie and getting hugs and kisses from her. She loved all her nieces and nephews so much, and though she never had children of her own, she was like a second mother to all of us. I remember her being filled with joy, so thrilled to see us happy and excited about the party. I have never been able to think of Christmas and not associate it with her, and though she is gone now, I still do because the "spirit" was surely in her and it was quite contagious.

Now that I am older, I am back in the fold and a believer again. I keep the tradition of Santa Claus alive with my children, and whenever I am asked if I believe in the man known as St. Nick, Kris Kringle, or Santa Claus, I remember the spirit of those "Little Christmas" parties at Aunt Margie's house and I say, "Yes" because that spirit is transferred from generation to generation, and that spark I feel as I find that special toy for my kids is surely the proof that Santa Claus lives, as Francis P. Church once told little Virginia O'Hanlon so many years ago, "forever" and will always "make glad the heart of childhood."

So this year I have decided we will have our own "little Christmas." I will tell my children one of the stories my grandfather told (without scaring them like he scared me), give them little treats, and stoke the fire of their imaginations, preparing them for the Christmas morning to come when all their visions of gifts and more will be realized. After all these years, I think it's about time this family recognized St. Nicholas again, for is he not the one who started it all?

Whether we realize it or not, after all this time he is inspiring us to emulate him year after year. Take a look in a mirror when you are in the store and putting yet another toy in your cart, and you just might get a glimpse of the jolly old elf dressed in your clothing. Happy St. Nicholas Day to all, and to all a Gute Nacht.

The Pope's Endorses Condom Use: A Door Opens

Article first published as The Pope's Endorses Condom Use: A Door Opens on Blogcritics.

Though it may be difficult for people who are not Catholic to understand the church and its leadership, do not think that Catholics themselves ever understand things any better. Some of us too were caught by surprise when we heard the recent news that Pope Benedict XVI had endorsed limited use of condoms (by male prostitutes). While some may see this as bizarre, it does open a door that many of us may have thought was permanently sealed at the Vatican.

A few days later, the Vatican "clarified" its position and basically said that "all" people should be able to use condoms as a way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. In this amazing turnaround, it seems that the Vatican somehow realized that it cannot be the stalwart supporter of a "right to life" for the unborn without wanting to save the lives of those already living.

This whole business of the Pope's opening a door shows an awareness that has been very much needed and a long time coming. As a leader of the world's Catholics, the Pope still does have the authority and respect of many people (many non-Catholics respect him as a holy man as much as they would respect the Daili Lama). His recognition of the realities of AIDS spread through sexual activity is a milestone for the Vatican and a crucial move toward facing the realities of the twenty-first century.

This does not mean that Catholic teenagers everywhere will start using condoms, or for that matter adults or even the male prostitutes for whom the Pope originally made this statement. Still, it does infiltrate into the common understanding of people that condoms can be used to stop the spread of a killer disease. If in the process this also stops unwanted pregnancies, then some may see that there is an additional benefit from this pronouncement.

When I heard this news, I couldn't help thinking about a story of a young girl I knew over twenty-five years ago. As her 8th grade teacher I felt she was articulate to the point of putting college grads to shame. "Tanya" was a straight-A student, and at thirteen she had the whole world ahead of her and confessed that "I have big dreams for myself." I had visions of her becoming anything she wanted to be, but I did imagine her becoming a doctor because of her love of science and a desire to "save the world" from everything.

Unfortunately, this young lady became pregnant. When she disappeared from my class a few months later, I learned about this from her mother. I did not see her again until graduation day when I saw her sitting on the steps of a house across the street watching her classmates in their caps and gowns as they filed into the auditorium for commencement.

Some of the kids saw her and waved, but they had their own appointments with destiny inside those doors, and they moved on. I ran across the street and sat next to her. I asked her how she was doing, and she held her swollen stomach and said, "I'm due any day now." Tears streamed down her face and I had to fight back my own. Tanya told me how she wanted the boy to use a condom, but he told her, "I'm not wearing that. It's against my religion." Then this "good" Catholic boy took her virginity and impregnated her.

Here was the girl I felt would be a star, and now she sat there about to become a mother and was watching all her friends go off to get the dream she might never attain. I only had a few minutes and asked if she was well and what her plans were. She said her mother would help her raise the baby. The baby's father ran away. He was an older boy who never graduated from high school. He had no job and no prospects and now he left her with a baby and little if any hope.

Well, I went into that auditorium that day and fought away the tears. I figured I'd never see Tanya again, but I did see her a few years later on the L train as I left a meeting in Manhattan and was going home. She sat on the train with her mother and a little boy, and she was feeding him broken cookies from a plastic bag. She recognized me and said, "Hi, Mr. L." I sat down next to her mother and she said, "This is my son Tyrone."

The girl was now around seventeen and did not look well. I asked her how she was doing and she cried, leaning against her mother's arm like the little girl she used to be.

Her mom turned to me and said, "She is very sick, Mr. L. She has the AIDS."

I looked at Tyrone, who seemed very healthy, and asked, "Is Tyrone okay?"

"Yeah," her mom said, fighting back her own tears. "His tests come back negative so far."

There was no way to talk about things with them like I would when I ran into other former students. I couldn't ask her about high school because she never went to one. I couldn't ask her about her plans for college. Anything and everything she should be looking forward to was gone.

Tanya looked up at me and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "You...you married yet, Mr. L?"

I couldn't believe that she could even think about me in this situation. I just shook my head. "No, not yet." Sometimes I thought I was too involved in my studies. I was getting a doctorate and it was consuming my time, so I was putting off the rest of my life thinking there was always tomorrow. Sitting there and listening to Tanya clarified my own mortality; I realized I didn't have all the time in the world.

We talked about Tyrone after that. He liked the Incredible Hulk. He liked Barney and Elmo and all the things kids like. As I heard him say "More cookie" to his mother, I watched Tanya's frail hand shake as she fed another piece to him.

I got off the train at my stop and turned to watch them through the window as the sliding doors hushed to a close. The familiar ringing sound could be heard, and through the smudged glass I saw Tyrone lean against Tanya and she against her mother. The train went on into the darkness of the tunnel, and I knew I would never see her again.

All these years later the Pope made his pronouncement, and I thought about Tanya almost immediately. Even if John Paul II (the Pope back in those days) had issued a similar edict, there would be no way of knowing if that boy would have used a condom, but it makes me wonder. I also wonder what happened to Tyrone. No doubt his grandmother raised him and maybe, just maybe, he had his mother's innate intelligence and went on to be the doctor she never could be, working to cure AIDS and other diseases. At least that's what I want to think.

The Pope's endorsement surely will save lives, and that has to count for something, but it's all too late for a girl who dreamed big and was lost to the ravages of a disease that marches on, regardless of policy, like a wildfire consuming everything in its path. Some may think what the Pope has said is too little to late, but for all the Tanyas out there and the Tyrones yet to be born, it may just save some lives and help to abate the cruelty of an illness without a consciousness that soldiers on and on.

 

As Gang Green Turns: Smith Is a Cinderfella in Jets Over Bengals 26-10

Article first published as As Gang Green Turns: Smith Is a Cinderfella in Jets Win Over Bengals 26-10 on Blogcritics.

There is something about a guy without a shoe scoring a touchdown that has a bit of comedy to it, and something of myth too. Cinderella lost her shoe and gained a prince; wide receiver Brad Smith lost his and helped the New York Jets (9-2) gain a victory over the Cincinnati Bengals (2-9) at New Meadowlands Stadium on Thanksgiving evening. This game was a feast to be sure for fans of Gang Green, and a reason to give thanks for head coach Rex Ryan, who hugged Smith so hard, he may have been thinking that the WR looked better than the turkey and all its trimmings dancing in his head.

This was not a game like the ones in the past few weeks, where the Jets faltered and almost lost to the Lions, Browns, and Texans. In this one the offense clicked in when it had to score points, and the defensive duo of Darrelle Revis and Antonio Cromartie helped shut down Terrell (Big Mouth) Owens and company. Owens had made some disparaging comments about Revis earlier in the week, but Revis did his talking on the field, holding TO to just seventeen yards.

The big story of the night was Smith, who took the spotlight away from Santonio Holmes, who had been the hero of the last three games. Smith scored two touchdowns, including one on an 89-yard kick-off return in which he made like Cinderfella. The lost shoe notwithstanding, Smith proved to be the Jets' best offensive weapon in the game.

Sanchez put in an acceptable but lackluster performance, going 16-for-28 for a total of 166 yards with one touchdown and one interception. Something has to change between now and next Monday night in the big showdown with the New England Patriots, who mauled the Detroit Lions (the same team who gave the Jets such a hard time two weeks ago). If Sanchez continues to play this way, the Pats are going to be walking off the field with a win.

Ryan, who alternates moments with foot in and out of his mouth, didn't waste any time to get the blood of his next opponent's blood boiling by commenting that the Patriots are the best team in football in a wise guy manner. He went on to say everyone says that "Except me." So the gloves are off and Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick has been slapped in the face. Okay, guys, choose your weapons and take thirty paces. This duel should be an exciting one.

There is plenty of time between now and next Monday for some back and forth saber rattling that should make what's going on between North and South Korea seem tame, but next Monday night's game in Foxboro Stadium will be a battle that may lead to winning the war for one of these teams this season.

Thinking About Thanksgiving During the Great Depression and Now

Article first published as Thinking About Thanksgiving During the Great Depression and Now on Blogcritics.


Somehow the great idea of a "day to give thanks" has been lost these days to the commercial hype for Christmas that starts around Halloween and does not let up until the 25th of December. I find Thanksgiving to be the perfect holiday, situated a month before Christmas and in, at least here in the Northeast, cold enough weather that cooking a great meal radiates throughout the house and hits visitors like a warm fragrant kiss as they walk through the door.

Unfortunately, although there is a great parade here in New York City, and people do gather around tables and enjoy meals together, Christmas still seems to be lurking at every turn. I turn on the radio and Christmas songs are being broadcast on seemingly every station. The decorations have been up in the stores for weeks already, and even individual houses and apartments have strung up lights and stuck up trees well in advance of the first day of December. This omnipresence of Christmas in November is annoying and, if you are a parent, also disturbing because it only stokes the kids' excitement and desire for the toys and games that are sought after as presents for under the tree.

Alas, it was not always this way. Speaking to my father, whose memories about seventy years ago are stronger than mine about yesterday, I get grounded in a different reality. He speaks vividly about many things from the past - a man ninety years plus who is sharp as a razor - but he can also tell me who won the competition on Dancing with the Stars or who sacked Mark Sanchez in the last Jets game.

Dad's memory of the Great Depression always gives me chills because the images are so stark, the reality so bleak, that I wonder how anyone today can compare the two times and think people had it better back then. Yes, you could get a whole pizza for a quarter and see movies for a nickel, but the average person (if he was lucky enough to be working) made less than $3,000 a year. As he always says, it is about "perspective" and he is able to give me that.

He recalls Thanksgivings past living here in Queens as being "out in the country." His father and brothers "built our house in the 1920s," and it stood on a block (off what is now called Springfield Boulevard) where other houses were slowly rising, and kids were moving in and they became his friends. My father and his brother had a wonderland of streams, woods, and ponds behind their house that seems impossible in the urban reality of Queens in 2010.

One Thanksgiving, 1933, stands out in his mind particularly. The Depression was in full force, and my grandfather was a NYC policeman. Dad's friends told him he was lucky his father had a job because most of the other boys' fathers had lost theirs. Dad remembers Pop coming home about once a week with some meat (mostly chicken), courtesy of Krauss the butcher whose shop was on the beat where he worked. Pop wasn't always that lucky though, and the Thanksgiving of 1933 looked like it would be one without any meat.


My grandmother had flour and some vegetables and planned to make a big vat of soup and homemade bread, but Dad and his brother wanted more than that. As they walked around the woods they went up along a ridge and saw Miller's farm, where a chicken coop stood under a starkly gray sky. My Dad had a plan to steal a chicken, but my uncle was older and wiser, telling him they couldn't do that. They went down to a stream and picked some berries; at least they figured their Mom could use those to make a pie.

At this point they saw a turkey running through the woods. Dad said he had never seen one before, and it looked like it was lost or something. My uncle picked up a big rock and tiptoed over, hoping to crush its head and bring home the prize, but Dad said the "turkey was faster than Jesse Owens" and shot off into the brush.

The next day after school, my uncle and father took their father's shotgun from the closet and some shells and went off into the woods on a hunt. They went to the place where they had seen the turkey, waiting for hours in the cold until it was getting dark. Having no luck, they started home and saw the bird crouching behind some flaming red bushes. My uncle raised the shotgun, pulled the trigger, and the force of the shot sent him onto his back. Both boys looked to see the bird running off merrily into the woods.

When they got home, Pop was waiting on the porch smoking a cigar. They looked at each other, thinking "we were going to get the belt." Pop asked them why they had taken the gun, and the boys explained that they had seen a turkey and wanted to surprise him for Thanksgiving. Pop said, "There have been no turkeys around here for many years." He seemed to understand them though and took the gun and rubbed both their heads affectionately. "It won't be so bad, boys, Krauss gave me some chopped meat. Your mom is making meatloaf for tomorrow."

Dad said he went to bed that night and dreamt that he woke up and saw his mother cooking the turkey from the woods in a big pan. He got up in the morning and the house was filled with aromas, and he rushed to the kitchen and saw his mother basting a big bird in the oven. He screamed, "Mom, where'd you get that turkey?"

She smiled as she closed the oven door and put two steaming pies on the windowsill. "Why don't you ask your father? He's out in the garage."

My father went outside in the cold air and raced into the garage. He saw some big sheets of the butcher paper Pop got from Krauss spread all over the workbench covered with blood. Next to the bench was a bucket of bloody parts, and Pop was cleaning his shotgun. "Pop," he asked, "where did you get that bird?"

Pop said, "You and your brother got me thinking that there was a turkey out there, so this morning at dawn I went out to where you said he was, and I saw him running around. He had a broken wing; that's why he was stuck out there."

"You shot him?" Dad asked. He kind of liked the idea of eating turkey for Thanksgiving, but the killing part didn't seem real until that moment.

Dad and his brother and parents sat down at the table, held hands, and gave thanks for their blessings. Pop said something about them being lucky, and Dad remembered looking around the table, smelling all the good food, and feeling that this had to be not only the best dinner in Queens that day, but in the entire USA. They ate well that year, and Dad never forgot that, even though the times were hard, life was good in his family.

Looking back on it now, he said it really makes him think about what has happened to Thanksgiving. "It's not the same anymore," he says. Well, that's true about a lot of things, but I wonder if he is right since Christmas seems to have encroached on this day and made it just like the opening door to the "holidays" instead of being an important holiday in and of itself.

Today I will sit down with my own family. My mother is gone now, and this is our fifth year without her. Dad's parents are gone even longer, but I remember them and he says that he thinks of them everyday. As we light candles and enjoy our feast, I will think of how easily we came by it. We went to the store where frozen and fresh turkeys filled an aisle, bought vegetables and fruits and desserts with no effort except to put them in the shopping cart, and drove home in the warmth of a car to a house surrounded by other houses, with the only streams and woods far off on Long Island.

As we eat I will look at my children and give thanks that they eat well and live well, but the memory of Thanksgiving 1933 will be in my thoughts too. It puts things in perspective and, even though times may seem rough now, we have an abundance that is overwhelming. I'll ignore the Christmas songs on the radio, the decorations in stores and on houses, and I will give thanks for what I have and for what my Dad once had as well, because this is the true reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving.