Thanksgiving landscape
Cheryl Unruh - Emporia
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
AUTUMN’S COLORS are betrayed by the emerald green of winter wheat.
And a bit of green grass hangs on in some ditches, but most of the natural world around us has been reset to earth tones.
Some days we get sunshine, and other days the sky hoards the sun’s warmth by covering itself with a blanket of overlapping clouds.
Through breaks in those clouds, shafts of light stream down to earth in straight lines, those rays surprisingly undisturbed by brisk winds.
In November, leaves blow down the sidewalks, they float on streams, and they fall asleep in ditches.
The landscape appears empty with the cottonwoods, hedge, oaks, the sycamores stripped of their foliage. A lineup of bony trees looks like a high school basketball team, all elbows and knees.
The earth has become harsh, longer and leaner, without the warmth of color and the softness of leaves. And without those leaves, barns and farmhouses, once hidden, are now revealed.
During this time of autumn persuasion with its monochrome landscape, we find Thanksgiving and a table of harvest.
In our homes, ovens are warm to the touch with turkeys roasting inside. Into the pot of soft and broken potatoes, we drop sticks of butter, maybe chunks of garlic, some heavy cream. Because if you have to die from something, let it be from mashed potatoes.
We mash those potatoes until only a few small lumps remain to remind us that they didn’t come from a box, that they were grown underground, the dirt washed from their skins.
I first learned about turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and pumpkin pie in the early ’60s at my grandmother’s house on the open plains of Central Kansas.
A quarter mile of rutted driveway led us to Grandma’s two-story farmhouse which straddled pasture and plowed land, protected on the north side by a cedar shelterbelt. This was where my dad grew up, on the farm, a couple miles outside of Pawnee Rock.
We opened Grandma’s wooden gate, then secured it by dropping the wide metal loop over the hedge post.
On Grandma’s porch, the gray painted boards gave way slightly under the family’s weight. She let us into her house through the wooden kitchen door that had a glass window and a lock which required a skeleton key.
We came, the cousins, the aunts and uncles, to Grandmother’s house. Women brought their homemade side dishes — sweet potatoes, green beans and cranberry salad, and placed them in the kitchen, awaiting the meal.
My German grandmother cooked on a stove which was fueled by propane while a round-edged refrigerator shivered across the room. On the countertop nearby, her ice pick was always ready for stabbing the flat slabs of ice that Grandma froze in aluminum trays.
In the dining room, a propane-fired heater provided warmth for the entire floor. (The upstairs bedrooms went unheated.) Off the dining room, the bathroom was always cold — but the outhouse was even colder.
For the meal, the dining table was pulled out from against the wall, leaves were added, a tablecloth spread and smoothed.
My brother and cousins and I filled drinking glasses with ice and water and we set the table.
Hot food was laid before us, white and dark meat, gravy, potatoes. Topped with shredded carrots, Grandma’s orange Jell-O did a hula dance whenever we moved our plates. There were warm rolls with butter, pumpkin pie and pecan, sometimes mincemeat.
And now, this week, when we drive through the countryside, we will take note of the late autumn landscape.
As the November air chills us, we gather in kitchens and dining rooms with family and friends and perhaps strangers. As conversation is passed around the table, this is where we find the season’s warmth.
Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
Happiness08 (anonymous) says...
That was beautiful! My fondest memories are of going to my Grandmother's for holidays too.
November 26, 2008 at 5:11 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )