“I’m a thankful man for every turn…”
Dateline: Thanksgiving 2018
“What if, today, we were grateful for everything?”
Charlie Brown
Happy Thanksgiving all’ya.
If you are reading this on Thanksgiving I’m home with my family, my daughter Ashley, son Jimmy and his girlfriend, Chelsea, bb and Riley too.
It is quite possible I’m asleep on the couch with a stain or two on my comfy shirt and pants, quite possible Riley is in the kitchen watching bb slice the turkey up to be stored and eaten for the next several days.
Very possible that at some moment of the day all of us looked around and were very thankful for the blessings in our lives of love and happiness, and I hope that you too had that happen to you today.
We here in the Barone pad wish you nothing but happiness, love and powerful stain removers for your clothes.
I got nothing here in this column that will make you cry, make you think, make you complain about me on boards, just got me some cool Thanksgiving stuff to make you smile.
Smiles, even ever so slight ones, they are good things nowadays.
I’ve worked on this holiday most of my adult life. That’s me as a TV reporter in California on a western movie set a around Thanksgiving I think. That guy next to me holding the script and storyboard was a good friend of mine, Tommy “Butch” Bond, he passed in 2005, but back in the 1930’s he was a child actor, the “Bully” of the Our Gang movies. In 1940-something he was the first actor to play Jimmy Olsen in the movies, Superman and Atom Man vs. Superman. Butch played in over 70 films in his career and was a charter member of the Screen Actors Guild, but to me he was a buddy with a dream.
I remember sitting with him in the KFSN newsroom one Thanksgiving in the early 1980s, he was the TV studio floor director then, he had a plate of turkey and was sitting at the “weather desk” across from me. “So Donny-B (what he always called me) what kind of crazy story did you come up with today?” He asked that because holidays are always tough story days and need lots of filler stories.
“I had dinner with the Pilgrims.”
Butch who by this time had heard almost everything in the TV business stopped his forkful of turkey midway to mouth, “Huh?”
“Yeah, I got the phone book and saw that we have a family here in Fresno named, Pilgrim, so I grabbed a cameraman and went over to their house and knocked on their door…”
Butch has put his fork back on his plate, “…knocked on their door with the camera running and when they opened the door I asked them on camera if they were eating Thanksgiving dinner now, they said they were, so I asked them if it would be possible if I could eat Thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims…”
Butch is now laughing and spitting out some of that turkey, “…so they invited me and the cameraman in and we had Thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims and their family.”
“Did you know them before knocking on their door?”
“Nope, but I told them I used to live in New England and that seemed to work, good dinner as well.”
True story, Dinner with the Pilgrims aired on KFSN that Thanksgiving night, last thing Butch said to me in the TV studio, “Don’t ever get un-weird Donny-B.”
I didn’t Butch, miss you.
By the way, the next Thanksgiving I pretty much stayed in the studio with this guy…
…Mr. Food who tried as best he could to show me how to cook.
“…on every highway I’ve been down…”
So, if you are the “normal” American, whatever that might mean, this Thanksgiving you will consume roughly 4,500 calories throughout this holiday day, supposedly 3,200 calories for dinner, 1,300 calories for desert and the occasionally “tasting” you do and lie about during the day.
A few years back bb and I got to spend Thanksgiving with Elite angler John Crews and his family in an 1700s farmhouse in Virginia.
As I watched John carve up one of the turkeys for the feast I drifted back to a story I did a long time ago with the Swanson food folks. I used to do a minute and a half segment at the end of the news where I did all sorts of weird things in a piece called “Did You Ever Wonder.”
As John cut and sampled I remembered going to the Swanson plant on a story about “Did You Ever Wonder…how they get the mashed potatoes in the TV dinner.” I don’t know if they make TV Dinners anymore, ask your parents if you don’t know what I’m talking about. So I worked the Swanson TV Dinner Mashed Potato Filler Guy line.
I got most of the potato in but it was one fast arse line I have to tell you, but as I was leaving with the PR lady she noticed I had a bunch of turkey all over me. She said, “In 1953 Swanson overestimated the amount of frozen turkeys needed for Thanksgiving by 20-some tons, so they took all the left over turkey (said while seeing for the first time the dollop of mashed potato on my shoe) and sliced it all up and packaged the meat creating the first TV dinner.”
I didn’t Google that back then to see if she was just PRing me mainly because the dudes who would later invent Google were only 10 years old then, but she said it so I believe it.
Just want to shout out to the Family Crews for a wonderful Thanksgiving that bb and I still smile about.
“…every mile I’ve lost, every crossroad stop…”
“Be thankful for what you have, your life is someone else’s fairy tale.”
Wale Ayeni
If this is Thanksgiving, this must be Detroit.
Since 1934 the Detroit Lions have played on every Thanksgiving compiling a 37-39-2 record. Thanksgiving 1934 they played ‘Da Bears and lost 19-16.
If you are reading this on Thanksgiving, look up at the TV, the Lions are once again playing the Bears today, ‘Da Bears have a .529 winning record on Turkey Day, the Lions .481…should be a good game.
But it wasn’t the first Turkey Day game, that is credited as happening in 1869, here’s how The Evening Telegraph out of Philadelphia, Pa., reported on the “Foot-Ball” game:
In 1876 Princeton played Yale in a game of “football” in NYC on Thanksgiving and that pretty much began this football and turkey day.
“…every storm that turned me around, oh it’s better than I could have planned…”
“Small Cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.”
I have my entire life chased the Norman Rockwell vision of things. One year bb and I spent Thanksgiving with the Iaconelli family, we are forever friends…
…a Jersey guy, a New York guy.
I wish all of you a Rockwell Thanksgiving, a day filled with food, with family, with football and faith.
May you smile and hug, may you burp and laugh, may you remember Thanksgivings past and have many future Thanksgivings together with those you love.
From the Barone household, nothing but love and Happy Thanksgiving,
db & bb, ab & jb, jb & cp…and riley too.
“…it’s made me who I am.”
Thankful Man
Trace Adkins
“We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.”
Neal Maxwell