Thanksgiving weekend arrived, and I thought I was finally going to get to spend one with Grandma and Grandpa McClain. I was wrong. Part of my mother’s and father’s visitation agreement was that I would spend the major holidays with my mother and my brother would stay with my father. So, on their way down from Naubinway, in the upper peninsula of Michigan, they stopped in Mesick and swapped sons. Jeff stayed with my dad and I went with Mom, Steve, and my sister Wendy down to west Michigan to spend the holiday with their parents.
Somehow, it always worked out the same way. Steve was the oldest of six brothers and sisters. His family celebrated Thanksgiving during the day, while my mother, the second oldest of four, celebrated with her mother and siblings in the evening. The logistics of family holidays always fascinated me. Mom and Steve would leave from work on the Wednesday before, pick me up and drop Jeff off at around 8:30 or 9:00 at night. Then they would complete the three-hour drive, ending up at Steve’s parents’ house around midnight. Then, all the Hammonds would stand around in a circle in the kitchen, drinking and catching up, while we kids would go to bed in our respective spots. We all had assigned places in the old farmhouse and we knew where to go.
Everyone in Steve’s family was always kind to me. I can’t think of a bad thing that I would ever say about them. They loved my mother, and out of respect for her, they treated us kids well. We would literally wake up to the sound of roosters crowing in the morning. Steve’s dad had been a farmer, but then worked for DeNooyer Chevrolet as some kind of mechanic. I knew that very well, because “The Stick” that Steve beat me with was a promotional item that he had gotten from there. It was a 14″ ruler because DeNooyer would go the extra distance, or some such. I doubt you could even read any lettering left on the wooden side of The Stick, because it had been blistered into my rear end so many times. Steve’s mom was an acerbic lady, and much to Steve’s consternation, smoked. Steve was a rabid anti-smoker, and railed against anyone who did that, especially my dad.
We got up in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, and the women, my mom included, would start breakfast. Mom and Steve always brought milk, bread, and eggs so that they wouldn’t be putting Steve’s parents out too much by feeding us. The men would all go out deer hunting, because deer season was in full swing by Thanksgiving Day. I wanted to go too, even though I was still only 12. I had taken hunter safety, and I had hunting clothes, but you had to be 14 to get your deer hunting license. It dawned on me that day that I would miss next year, too. Gun season ended on November 30 and I wouldn’t turn 14 until December. I was mad. I wanted to be part of the group of men very badly, but they wouldn’t let me. “Maybe next year,” they said.
A word on hunting: I know there are people who are dead set against it. Sorry, I’m not one of you. Steve’s family subsisted on hunting. At his family’s house, I had eaten rabbit, squirrel, raccoon, deer, and just about anything else that walked on four legs. I’m pretty sure we ate opossum once, but I can’t swear to it. They ate what they killed and I just don’t see anything wrong with that.
While we kids would keep ourselves busy and out of the women’s hair, they prepared Thanksgiving dinner. After putting the younger kids, Wendy and a few of her cousins, on the floor in front of the TV to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I found myself in the den, as I always did, pulling out the coverless copy of Batman #203 that I kept stashed there. I read it cover-to-cover, as I always did, put it carefully away again, and then looked for something else to read. Steve’s mother always had a treasure trove of trashy novels, but I would occasionally find something interesting. And I did. I found a paperback copy of Peter Benchley’s The Deep. I had read Jaws when I was a year younger, even after being traumatized by peeking at a particularly gory scene in the movie from the back of the station wagon when I was 10. Despite that, I liked Benchley’s writing. I asked if I could borrow The Deep to read it, and Steve’s mother laughed at my being somewhat precocious, a 12-year-old asking to read a fairly serious bestseller like that, and she told me that I could have the book. I couldn’t believe it! I thanked her and off into a corner I went.
By the time the men came back, empty-handed but in good spirits (they drank while hunting too), the football game was about to start. Watching the Detroit Lions play on Thanksgiving Day was a Michigan tradition, and it was no different in the Hammond household. I watched the game too, though to be honest, I had only a rudimentary understanding of football, thanks to hanging out at the games in Mesick, and cheered for the Lions as well. The Bears beat the Lions 31-14. I don’t actually remember the score; I just looked it up.
After a delicious turkey dinner, I helped clean up the dishes just like I did at home, and then we packed up to go to my Grandma B’s house. If there was anything better to my 12-year-old growing self than Thanksgiving dinner, it was two Thanksgiving dinners. Grandma B only lived a short 35-minute drive away in Otsego, and I looked forward to seeing my own aunts and uncles and cousins. Everyone was usually already there when we arrived, and we split off into our peer groups, as usual. I was the oldest, then Eric followed, younger by only 10 weeks. Then Peter and Cathy, just a bit more than a year younger. Then came the second wave, with Scott, my absent brother Jeff, and Dennis, with Wendy and Melissa bringing up the rear. My cousin Masami was in their group too, but was not often with us even for holidays. Her father, my uncle Norman, was in the army and was stationed in Japan, where she was born. Uncle Norman had married a Japanese woman, my Aunt Naeo, so Masami was half-Japanese.
Eric, Peter, and I would always read comic books or play pretend games, but we were getting older now, and such games were beneath us. So, we just kind of hung out, talked about the usual pre-teen woes and stuff, and probably Star Wars. Everyone talked about Star Wars. We kept an eye on the younger kids as they played out in the back yard. This was a different experience compared to times past, when I had to curb my behavior for fear of Steve. He had done nothing even remotely threatening toward me the whole time we had been together. I didn’t trust it, though, so I kept my behavior in check anyway.
After dinner, we said our goodbyes and headed back to Steve’s parents’. There wasn’t enough room in Grandma B’s house for us to stay. On Saturday morning, after Steve and his dad came back from an early hunt, we loaded up the car and headed to Battle Creek. Mom wanted to do some Christmas shopping and go to the movies. She asked me what I wanted for my birthday, which was coming up in 10 days, and instead of choosing some fanciful thing I knew she would never buy, I asked for something sensible: a digital watch. She asked me what I meant, and I explained that there were now watches with the same kind of LED (light-emitting diode) display that her calculator had. We found one at a reasonable price and she bought it for me.
We had all seen Star Wars a number of times, and Smokey and the Bandit as well. But there was a new release from the guy who had directed Jaws, Steven Spielberg. It was called Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We were all kind of excited to see it, and my mom got us a big bucket of popcorn to share and had me sit by her. I had missed my mom a lot, and was glad to be able to spend time with her outside of all the holiday festivities. She had to poke me a few times during the movie, though, because I kept checking the time. You had to press a button on the side of the watch. It didn’t just stay on all the time. I couldn’t help it, the novelty of the watch took over. If you pressed the button twice, the date would come up. If you pressed it a third time, there was a running count of seconds, which would remain unless you pressed the button a fourth time. The directions warned against doing this very much because it would drain the battery. Eventually, I got settled in, but I still remember thinking, excitedly, that we lived in the future!
There were a few times when I caught my mom sniffling and even tearing up during the movie. I didn’t think that it was a particularly sad movie, but later on, I figured out why. She missed me. And darned if I didn’t think about her every time I checked my watch.
