The pictured Irish blessing is simply one that has always struck a chord with me. No more beautiful words have ever been strung together.
This is more of a story on the Thanksgivings of my boyhood, an amalgam of the various pieces and parts of a number of Thanksgivings blended into one. It would be impossible for me to choose a singular Thanksgiving from this period of my life, but, in looking back over my many years, these stand alone amidst my most cherished Thanksgiving memories.
When I was a boy, my brother, sister, parents and I would often gather to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with my grandparents in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. As kids, we were fortunate enough to have both our paternal grandparents and our maternal grandmother and extended families living within twenty miles of one another in some of the most beautiful country in all of the northeast.
By this time of year, the popular tourist region had slowed after the leaves of autumn had fallen. It would by then be cold and the days short, particularly that far north. We would have seen the first of the many winter snows and, back in the 70’s, the snow ran deep upon the land throughout the winter months.
My immediate family lived roughly ninety minutes to the south in the Saratoga area, north of the state’s capitol of Albany. Either the night before or early Thanksgiving morning, the five of us would excitedly pile in for the drive. It was not unusual for my dad to drive us there through a winter storm or at least some snow squalls on route. We’d be taking the “Northway”, a section of I-87 running north from Albany to the Canadian border. I always loved that it was formally named that by the state. If we were driving at night, I distinctly recall the mesmerizing effect of the snow coming towards us, arcing over the hood of the car. I would stare out the window and have skiers dreams as I would be skiing at my favorite mountain, Whiteface, at least one if not two days over the holiday weekend. As I came of age, I’d have to choose between whitetail deer hunting with my dad (another of my favorite things and it remain that way until after college when I moved west, to Colorado).
My younger sister and brother would typically fall into a deep slumber at some point during the drive and the car would mostly be silent with me awake in the backseat staring at the snow blowing by and both parents quiet, spinning down from the work-a-day world, he as an engineering supervisor for the state and she as an assistant manager for a bank. It wasn’t lost on me that the adult world wasn’t full of fun and games.
We’d get off the Northway and travel west, then north on Highway 9N passing several Adirondack landmarks such as Chapel Pond, the trailhead to Giant Mountain, and through well-known small Adirondack towns such as Keene Valley, where my mother grew up and the gateway to the High Peaks region, a large geologic cluster of forty-six mountains over 4,000 feet above sea level (ASL), and Keene, the gateway to Mt. Van Hovenburg (the one and only Olympic bobsled course in the US for half a century) and Lake Placid, a two-time site of the Winter Olympics.
When we hit the tiny town of Upper Jay, we’d cross the bridge over the East Branch of the Au Sable river, travel the last mile and a half, turn left up the steep concrete driveway which was built by my grandfather, and we were there! This was my dad’s home until he went off to college. We were all “home for the holidays”! To us kids, this was every bit as much home as was our house in a subdivision that ninety miles south. My dad still kept his room there with clothes and hunting and fishing gear. I would eventually populate his room with my own clothes and gear and we would share that room, with the now two twin beds, during our numerous trips “Up North” to hunt and fish.
The excitement was almost palpable as we walked in, and, after bliss-filled greetings with our grandparents in the kitchen, head straight for the great room to feel the kind of fire only my grandfather could build in his handcrafted granite and marble fireplace with the look of having held a thousand fires burning into the night. This was no ordinary fireplace, but a masterpiece built with my grandfather’s master craftsman’s hands, Huge, rectangular shaped hunks of granite with giant slabs of marble for the hearth and mantle. I believe he lifted each stone into place alone. Some of these pieces must have weighed a hundred pounds, or more Applying mortar and setting and leveling them solo would have been no mean feat.
At the west end of the room there was a long day bed and above it, a large picture window that we, as kids, could stare out of and view wildlife on the white pine filled hillside maybe seventy feet away.
We’d see all sorts of songbirds and partridges, squirrels, an occasional deer, porcupine, skunk, and once we caught a rare glimpse of a pine marten. The area was wild and many woodland creatures stayed out of sight. They had not yet become habituated to humans as many creatures living near human settlements have today. There were numerous large white pines surrounding the house providing shade in the summer and some protection from winter winds. Winter night-time temperatures regularly dipped to ten or fifteen below zero. Thanksgiving temperatures were more hospitable but it could still get quite cold, cold enough for snow to remain on the ground until the following spring.
If we’d driven up the night before, we’d, the seven of us, would gather in the great room and enjoy each other’s company for a short time before going off to bed. As I remember it, the house used heating oil stored in a hulking black tank in the cellar which fed a boiler and the boiler fed the heat registers in the upstairs sleeping quarters. Many of my older relatives had lived through the Great Depression, so they were frugal enough that most people today would find the lifestyle extremely uncomfortable. Register delivered heat was expensive, so, the fireplace was the home’s main source of heat. I don’t recall how many cords of firewood would be put up each fall, but I believe the wood shed must have held four or five cords. It is from them that I learned (and came to enjoy) keeping a cold house. The cellar doubled as cold storage for my grandmother’s canning operation with all sorts of fruit jams, pickled cucumbers, beans, tomatoes and other canned goods from the large garden. Two large freezers held an ample supply of frozen foods and quantities of both beef and venison. Other staples, including vegetables from the garden and sacks filled with potatoes, were stored in the root cellar which my grandfather had dug into the hillside when he built the garage and workshop. Again, being of the Depression Era, many of my relatives lived a quasi-subsistence lifestyle heavily reliant on their gardens and venison from deer harvested during hunting season each year. I looked up to them in a neverending awe and years later I would come to emulate their lifestyle, or, as close as I could come to it.
When I was old enough, I remember getting up early while the others were still asleep and building the morning fire. Learning how to build a good fire was just one of a thousand lessons I would carry with me for the rest of my life. Roughly an hour later, my grandmother would be serving up Thanksgiving breakfast replete with popovers (a tradition carried forward by my mom and then each of her offspring) pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hand-squeezed orange juice. I’d go out on the porch to read how cold it had gotten that night. Back then, before global warming had taken its firm grip on the environment, there was almost always enough snow to cover the ground completely, and, by Thanksgiving, temperatures were likely to dip from ten degrees above to just below zero (-F). By February, snowbanks lining the local roads would grow to five feet, or more.
The morning had us doing something outside. My four-years younger brother, Adam, and I might be out on the front porch practicing with our matching model 9422 Winchester rifles as given to us one fine Christmas when I might have been all of ten and he, just six. It was during times like this that gave my three-years-younger sister, Kristi, her own special time with our grandparents. This was important, and, though I didn’t piece it together as a kid, the Stone Adirondack household was very much a man’s world. My father had been an only child amongst not only his own parents, but my grandmother’s brother (my great uncle Bub) and aunt Rosemary and sister (my great aunt Rose) and uncle Francis. After retiring as a construction superintendent on industrial-scale projects all over the country and then closer to home in the Albany area, my grandfather seemed to be very much his own man and clearly enjoyed working alone. He could almost always be found outside working on the house he had refurbished, in his garage/workshop, or out on the property. Then my brother and I came along to share in all that masculine glory while my sister was left to carve her own way, which, incredibly, she somehow managed to do. Time spent with our grandmothers (on both sides) and other, older female Adirondack relatives had its own deep rewards. Adirondack women were strong willed, with powerful minds and were not to be trifled with. Our now eighty-five year-old mother is a torchbearer for that lineage.
We might then travel a mile up the road to go skating in a slough that my great uncle Bub would plow and trim back the willows so that we kids had our own private skating rink, at the edge of his section of woods and large hay meadow, virtually in the middle of nowhere except to be accompanied by nature, herself. When we were a bit older we would spend bitterly cold nights skating and playing hockey while some of the adults would join us, hanging-out near the warmth of a large bonfire. We would visit with my great uncle Bub and great aunt Rosemary, absolutely perfect human beings who never had the good fortune of having children of their own. The rest of the morning might be spent at my great aunt Rose and great uncle Francis’s loving home a mile and a half to the south, along the Au Sable river. At each stop, we’d be fed something from the family’s Thanksgiving recipe book.
By the time we returned to our grandparents’ house, we were already overfed for the day and Thanksgiving dinner was to be served in just an hour, maybe two. This is where things get a bit fuzzy for me. My dad had probably gotten up hours before dawn to go hunting. He preferred to hunt alone and his favored place for at least forty years was high up on Cascade mountain, a steep and rocky mountain just a thirty minute drive from his boyhood home where all of us were waiting for him to walk in through the door and tell us all that he’d gotten a Thanksgiving day buck! He would arrive just in time for our giant turkey dinner. After I turned fourteen, which was still several years away, I would be joining him. My mom would have been feeling a strong gravitational pill to be surrounded by not only us, but her own large family in Keene Valley. It is my best recollection that, as kids, we would be spending part of Thanksgiving or at least Thanksgiving weekend with her and her amazing family full of Adirondack men (uncles, grown cousins) that I also revered. My aunts were fine Adirondack women, as was my mom.
But, as memory serves, there were many years that my mother shared her Thanksgiving with us at my grandmother and grandfather Stone’s home before heading to her childhood home in Keene Valley on Thanksgiving night. Again, I am uncertain as to this part and how it all fit in. Some years, with the exception of my dad, the rest of us would break Thanksgiving bread with my mom’s side of the family. Any way you put it, as siblings within the greater context of the holiday season, couldn’t have had it any better.
Dinner would come at around 4 PM, as darkness was beginning to fall, the late afternoon light being blocked by Ebenezer mountain , which stood as a sentinel, protecting us from the busy world from which we came for the weekend.
The spread of food which had been presented before us took my grandmother much of the preceding day and all of Thanksgiving morning and afternoon to prepare. But before passing plates, there were several moments of utter quiet as we each reflected on our good fortune to be associated with such an incredible family. In the earliest years, my grandmother would read the above prayer and as we grew, each of us children would read these same words. It was a rare moment of contemplation, solemnity, and joy all wrapped in a warm blanket of love and gratitude. Only then were we as kids allowed to partake in the feast set before us.
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