Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving Memories

My cell phone buzzed Saturday evening as I left the “wine and spirits” store with a selection of fine vino. It was my cousin Drew. I hastened to answer because when I miss a call from Drew, it’s hard to reconnect.

Drew is confined to a wheelchair and can’t use his hands like he once could. He has multiple sclerosis (MS), one of the unusually high number of Gulf War veterans afflicted by the neurological disorder. He lives at the Veterans Administration (VA) facility in Butler, Pennsylvania. I grew up a mile from that VA building, the same time that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s parents worked there. It’s just down the road from the Butler Farm Show Grounds where Donald Trump was shot on July 13. Sirens had wailed past the building as the former president was rushed toward Butler Memorial Hospital in town.

Among vets from the Korean War, Vietnam War, and World War II, Drew stands out. He’s only 57 years old but has been confined to a wheelchair for years now.

Growing up, Drew was an athlete, a wild man, and a fun guy to be around. He was the quarterback for his high school football team, an impressive achievement anywhere in western Pennsylvania, where our high school QBs become college QBs and sometimes NFL Hall of Famers: Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Jim Kelly, Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas, and George Blanda.

Drew went on to play in college, though scholastic life wasn’t for him. He instead joined the military and served his country in the 1991 Gulf War, commissioned aboard a battleship. Something happened during that time that severely affected Drew’s health. He has various theories. Shortly thereafter, his body shut down from a strange form of MS. The condition has been called Gulf War Syndrome.

Drew had called to talk about Pennsylvania college football — Pitt was getting trounced by Louisville and Penn State barely edged out Minnesota. Our conversation turned to Thanksgiving at our grandparents’ house. This would be my dad’s parents and Drew’s mom’s parents.

I haven’t talked about that side of the family in my columns for The American Spectator. I tend to focus on my mom’s side, the Italians, who are crazy, raucous, loud, loving, and in so many ways plainly indescribable. Every wedding was like the scene from the start of The Godfather. My dad’s side was nothing like that. It was quiet, subdued, smaller. Those gatherings were comprised of about a dozen in all, unlike the Italian side, where hundreds amassed and shouted and laughed and acted like maniacs.

Unlike the Italian side, we visited my dad’s parents in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, only once or twice a year. That included Thanksgiving.

Drew and I last Saturday reminisced about those Thanksgivings, recounting every type of food and drink we imbibed every November. Aside from the obvious — turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie — we recalled a unique kind of nut-roll cookie that my grandma always made as well as Rice Krispie Treats done in her special way. There was also an odd type of local mint ginger ale that my grandfather picked up. Drew and I remembered the name: Tom Tucker Ginger Ale.

As Drew and I talked, we laughed. And as usual, he never once complained about his situation at the VA. He never complains. He has always been thankful. He was thankful again as we talked about Thanksgiving memories.

That brings me to new Thanksgiving memories, being made today. Here at the Kengor household in November 2024, we’re making our own. Some very unique ones.

As I write, I hear gobbles outside. They emanate from our turkey coop. Currently, I have only two, a male and a female. They’ll be spared the blade this Thanksgiving because our freezer already holds several from the previous harvest. These two are for mating, for creating little turkeys next spring. The male will do his part to help ensure the eggs laid by the female are fertilized. Each year, that happens like clockwork, part of the natural biological order divined by the Creator. No “gender dysphoria” there. I will do my part by incubating and hatching the eggs. This time next year, my current gobblers will face their dénouement and find themselves an unwitting part of the Thanksgiving feast.

As I write, I also hear the crowing of our rooster. In July, we picked up from Agway, 12 newly hatched Barred Plymouth Rock chickens. We had thought that all were female — i.e., egg-layers. But as often happens, you sometimes accidentally end up with a rooster. He truly rules the roost. There’s no gender-identity confusion for this cock.

The woke liberal might insist that my rooster suffers from “toxic masculinity.” Lately, he has been hopping on the backs of the hens, sinking his beak into their necks as the poor gals scream. One such violation that I witnessed this week was so vicious that I grabbed the Louisville Slugger, approaching the male perpetrator Buford Pusser-style. With cocky defiance, the rooster thought about taking me on but relented from the hen’s neck and strutted off, biding his time until the next female victim.

Dear progressives, you might think a lecture on misogyny would have been best at that moment, but I instinctively went for the baseball bat. Your crowing about sexism would have made no difference with this crude creature.

Upon observing such violent displays, I resolved that the rooster needs to face the blade this Thanksgiving week. As I wrap up this column, I’m heading out to the coop to wrestle him, grab his spurred feet, shove him into a cage, and cart him off to Amish country to be butchered. Wish me luck!

And don’t feel bad for the feathered beast. If he can’t get along with his peers, even the gentler sex, drawing blood from them, stressing them out (they’re not laying eggs), then he must go. Rejoice, feminists, he will be punished for assaulting the hens. Capital punishment.

All of which is to say, we’re expecting a hearty feast at the Kengor house this Thanksgiving. We’ll be enjoying a home-raised turkey and perhaps a fresh chicken as well.

For that and more, I shall give thanks. We’ll say grace and I’ll express gratitude for the cooked birds, for my family, for the freedoms bestowed by America’s forefathers, for God, and for my cousin Drew — who’s always thankful, no matter his circumstances.

READ MORE from Paul Kengor:

‘We Win, They Lose’: Remembering Richard V. Allen

Justice Comes to HHS: Trump Taps Kennedy

That’s How You Overturn an Election

The post Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving Memories appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.