On Memories

The sky is golden-blue but a disturbing brown scrim of smoke hangs like a veil over the earth.

Most of us have warm, comfortable homes, but how many more have no shelter at all this year?

Our little community is lively and productive, but we can hear sabres being polished in the distance. The temperature is rising.

Despite the somber overtones, joining our neighbors from sea to shining sea in the task of preserving a positive sense of humanity and culture in this troubled world, enjoying a celebration mood, the rapturous smells of a meal laden with tradition, we can feel, if we allow it, the great good will that emanates out from the expression--however faltering or self-conscious--of simple gratitude.

This is my favorite holiday. I think it is better than all birthdays because it is diffused, outgoing. It is far more sensible than fireworks during the dry season and it is less commercially tainted than Christmas and Easter. Usually it is not political.

Yet it is a great, warm magnet, gathering up more reunions than any other weekend of the year.

My first child was due on Thanksgiving Day, but an array of snapshots of my husband and I among a motley assortment of friends that year proves that I sailed on well past it without bringing forth.

Sure that I would be elsewhere, busy, on that day, I had made no plans whatsoever, had nothing appropriate prepared, and thus arrived empty handed.

Those friends are scattered now, one has died, one went North to a communal farm, and one just slipped away, but their generous last minute invitation, their gentle solicitude, even their teasing about girth, worth, mirth and then birth, comprise a fond memory.

Before this, before I was forged by pioneering in the boondocks of Southwestern Oregon, by parenting three lively children, and by the education of a long marriage, I spent a Thanksgiving with my sister and her friends.

The clear eye of the camera has captured another telling moment here. As hostesses, breathy and full of giggles, we have carried a turkey--trussed, stuffed, buttered, and sewn, ready for the oven--outside into the sunlight to be photographed. I am confident there was a reason for this.

My sister, the first-born, with an air of giddy triumph, holds the weight of it. Beside her I stand, the squalmish assistant whose hands have not directly touched the cold, loose, eerie flesh of the bird and now hover slightly below it, under her hands, hoping to somehow convey to the scrapbook an equal measure of courage and effort. Too much mischief in that face.

Life switchbacks on us. Years later, in a new and deeply incorporated philosophy, I determined that, to act with full rectitude, I must actually participate in killing the turkey if I would be willing to eat it.

Full of this purpose, that Spring we purchased three baby turkeys. We fed them royally until, on the eve of this holiday, they had reached enormous proportions.

Noon. It was warm and sunny. I put on my raincoat, got the axe and marched resolutely to the fray.

Thirty minutes later, distraught but not bloody, I was hauled away, worse off by far than vigorous tom turkey, whiffed with ammonia and relegated to feather plucking and months of witty re-enactments of the scene.

At Christmas of that year, the inevitable question arose: turkey or no turkey. With erased ego and no morals left at stake, we still had the matter of an investment to consider.

A noble friend whose code and whose grit made this sort of operation quite simple and clean, volunteered to help us dispatch Mrs. Plump and we gratefully accepted. It would take just a few minutes.

With a deftness absent six weeks earlier, she was captured and hung upside down on the porch "to rest".

"Why here, right outside my window?" I asked meekly, still churning with visions and memories I did not care to replay.

Unfortunately she resisted all present skills and attempts at humane and reverent treatment and we soon, less than a beer later, had a partially neutralized turkey loose on the porch, wildly flapping and very bloody, turning colors, scattering firewood and all the junky hardware of a garage-less household out into the yard pell mell.

It was a scene of undescribable chaos with men, macho, ropes, knives, feathers, sandpaper, kindling, cat food, trowels, buckets, boots, all flying everywhere. Strange noises, shouting, curses, hideously incongruous laughter, supremely disapproving cats heading for high ground, and little, muffled, squeamish moans issuing from indoors.

Perhaps it is needless to mention that turkey number three survived eight Thanksgivings and died very fat of old age.

Store-bought turkeys, coolly purchased, predictably pale and indistinguishable, nameless, unblinking, advanced to heaven without drama or bonding, without ceremony or involved witnesses, these are the turkeys now.

Much relieved, embracing my white flag, I offer you directions for a simple, elegant addition to your repast, Blanched, Roasted Almonds. We do this every year. It has nothing to do with turkey, but it warms up the kitchen bright and early, forming an appealing advance guard for the ensuing parade of aromas and their entourage of reminiscence.

Place l# or so raw almonds in a sieve and the sieve into a heatproof bowl. Boil water and pour it over the nuts. Allow them to sit in the water for about one minute. They should not soak.

Lift the sieve and run the nuts under cold water to arrest further cooking. Start pinching off the skins.

Now place the nuts on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10-20 minutes, or until golden and slightly crisp.

These make lovely appetizers, salted or plain; they can be chopped as a garnish with wild rice or green beans, they jazz up the leftovers, and they also store, airtight, long after the party.

If you want to be dessert-fancy, whisk an egg white until it is foamy, drop the hulled, raw almonds into it, coating every one

Then drop them into a mixture of:

1/2 C.sugar

1/2 C. brown sugar

l 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

Toss around and coat well.

Spread them on buttered cookie sheets and bake at a lower temperature, 300, for about 15 minutes, watching carefully. When the coating is dry, turn off the heat and let the nuts cool completely in the oven with the door propped open.

Now put your feet up for a minute or two. That lovely, joined-up feeling is getting started.