Being of a certain age, it seems that every holiday, I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge being visited by holiday spirits from the past-but in a good way. I have so many wonderful years to revisit in my daydreams that I never know where to start. The years when my grandparents were alive are among my favorite. My grandmother could put out a Thanksgiving feast that would knock your eyes out. Notice I said "put out" and not "cook". My grandmother, Meme, was no cook but she could shop. She brought home jars of strange things that I can't even name but that always looked so pretty in her beautiful cut glass dishes. She dabbed mayonnaise on EVERYTHING in such an artistic manner that you never even realized that you had just eaten mayonnaise on jello. She put out hors d'oeuvures with frilly toothpicks on those folding TV trays that my 12 year old self believed was the epitome of sophistication.
My goodness. I am really getting carried away with this and I have not even come to the point. The point being that I found this old, very old, magazine in my father's garage last month. It is the 1980 Thanksgiving issue. It was 59 cents. Reading it brought on a flood of memories and surprises. Inside the magazine, along with the ads for home perms and 8 track players, cigarette ads took center stage with giant 2 page ads every few pages.
Meme died in 1989 on Christmas Day due to complications from chemo during a very brief battle with lung cancer. I am going be thinking of her today as I always do when I top my orange jello salad with heaps of mayo. It's good. It really is.
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