FROM MY BACKYARD

By Byron Higgin, Mascot Publisher

Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday.
What do I like about it?
Well, let’s just skip to the chase and say I love Pumpkin Pie. Hey, what’s not to love. It tastes creamy and goes down smooth. Ymmmm!
But there’s so much more.
I like waking up late in the morming, then turning on the TV to watch the annual Thanksgiving Day parade.
Originally known as Macy's Christmas Parade, it always gets me excited, as it does about three million others who attend the annual parade and another 44 million who catch it on TV.
Maybe it’s that giant Snoopy Flying Ace that keeps showing up overhead ... but whatever it is, I like it!
Then, of-course, I like the fact they play football all day.
It works well, too! You eat turkey and all the trimmings until you can’t see straight, then about that time the Detroit Lions (who have one win this century, I think) play and you won’t miss much if you curl up on the couch and go to sleep.
By the time you wake up the Cowboys are on playing somebody else and that’s a lot more fun.
Detroit has played on Thanksgiving Day since 1934, and despite the fact I’ve missed many of those games, well, I can’t recall ever seeing them win.
OK, back to what I like about Thanksgiving.
I like the cranberries.
I like the smell of the turkey in the oven.
And after it’s all over, well, I like leftovers.
On day I began to wonder how many United States towns take their name from the word “turkey”.
I found that answer on the internet.
You see, there’s:
•Turkey Texas (population 465)
•Turkey Creek, Louisiana (population 363)
•Turkey, North Carolina (population 270).
By the way, did you know how Thanksgiving Day became a national holiday?
A lady named Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor and author pushed it through as a national holiday in 1941.
OK, thats great, but I bet you didn’t know it was Sarah Josepha Hale who also wrote, “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”
Hey, by telling you that I kinda felt like Paul Harvey, and “now you know the rest of the story.”
Oh, except for one more thing.
I like Thanksgiving because my family will be together. My grandchildren will jump on me and ask me to play with them. It doesn’t get better than that. Happy Thanksgiving.

LAUGH A LITTLE:
It was the first time the young girl was eating Thanksgiving dinner without her family. Trying to re-enact the tradition, she prepared a dinner for herself alone. The next day, her mother called to see how everything went.
"Oh, mother, I made myself a lovely dinner, but I had so much trouble trying to eat the turkey!" said the daughter.
"Did it not taste good?" her mother asked.
"I don't know," the blonde said. "It wouldn't sit still!" —from ahaajokes.com

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:
As my Ole Pappy used to say: “Don't bother to give God instructions. Just report for duty.”
Ole Pappy was a religious sort of guy. He always thought it was better to let God do it than to try and do it ourselves.