The Times

ILLUSTRATION BY HERB DANSKA Journalist, novelist, and news-paperman, Hal Borland is the author of "This Hill, This Valley," "High, Wide and Lonesome," and many other books and short stories deal-ing with the ways of life of the American people, their dreams, and their purposes. What a remarkable organ is the juvenile stomach! I wish I still had one. No two Thanksgivings were ever the same, and it was always the children who made the difference. There was one year that Uncle Art saved the tail feathers of the turkey to give to us when we needed some new diversion. It was a fine, crisp, sunny day, and we were busy all morning playing tag or jumping from the beams into the hay in the barn loft. The whole morning passed without notable incident, but about noon we began to get hungry, and the tantalizing odors from the kitchen didn't help. We made a nuisance of ourselves at the kitchen door, and finally Grandmother said, "Arthur, it's time for the feath-." Art assembled us on the back porch and passed out the feathers, saying, "Now you're a tribe of Indians. Stick them in your hair and go hold a buffalo hunt." We went whooping. We were Apaches, every one of us. But there was an acute shortage of buffalo. Towser, the dog, was available, but he became the first buffalo on rec-ord to take refuge under a chicken house. There were a couple of cats, but they didn't want to play either. They took off for the far reaches of town after the first assault. we gave up the hunt and went on the warpath. SOME NEAR-GENIUS discovered that a lath and a length of binder twine could be fashioned into a bow that would shoot an arrow made from a strip of shingle. The air was soon full of arrows and cries of the wounded. But it probably was the shortest Indian fight in history. There couldn't have been more than three or four volleys before a six-year-old brave caught a blunt strip of shingle in the mouth. He lost two teeth that needed pulling anyway, and he bled like a stuck pig. He also screamed bloody murder. The screams brought aunts and uncles boiling from the house like hot-tailed hornets. The wrong aunt spanked the wrong cousin, and it looked for a time as though the whole tribe, big and little, was in for civil war. But just when things were getting out of hand, Grand-mother came out on the back porch. Her sense of timing was perfect. She shouted, "Dinner's ready to put on the table! Come on in here, every last one of you!" A truce was called. Everybody gathered in the kitchen and at the table. Napkins were tucked under chins and recriminations died away. Grandfather took the big carving knife in his calloused fist and held it like the sword of the avenging angel while Grandmother hissed everybody to silence. Then Grandfather bowed his head slightly, glared around the table, and said the shortest Thanksgiving grace in all the family records. "Thank God, nobody got killed. Now pass your plates up here. Amen." There must have been one or two quiet, orderly, dull Thanksgivings, but I don't seem to remember them. There were always children, and children just don't go in for quiet, orderly family holidays. Or dull Thanksgivings. Suburbia Today, November 1960 11

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