I remember when it used to be winter on Thanksgiving. Its going to be cold this year but not nearly as cold as I remember it being when I was a kid. I remember a lot. Maybe some details got added in over the years but I remember it as I remember it now. I guess its my take on my history.
In 1972, our first thanksgiving in Delmar, I remember watching my brother ice skate at the "secret pond" on thanksgiving day. He was 17 and I was 10. It was a pond that was loaded with big bullheads. I didn't know it held fish then but it wound up becoming my favorite fishing spot in the years that followed.
On that Thanksgiving, the ice was thin and I remember him skating back and forth on the only section of the pond that would hold the weight of his 6'4" frame and red Afro. There was open water near the spot where I sat and when he skated past it, the ice surface would bop up and down and cast little waves into the open water. I didnt skate. My mom would have killed my brother (and me too) if her baby had been out on the ice that early in the season.
When I lived in Pittsburgh (1970 or 71?), my brother and I hiked down the steep ravine behind our house and into the woods. It was thanksgiving eve and there was a heavy snow falling. I remember hiking through the woods with him. I was excited. Things looked different with snow on them; the creek, the trails, the old mineshaft and all of the other cool things in the gully behind our house. I remember it being shortly after dusk but everything was still bright from the snow. It was one of those snowfalls that made that that sizzling sound when the flakes hit the leaves that were still left on the oak trees.
There was a good coating, maybe four inches or so. When we came upon one of my favorite places, (a spring on the hillside where I caught salamanders and crawfish that summer) there were two spots of bare ground. They were completely devoid of snow. My brother and I walked up to the spots and, when we looked closely, we could see steam rising off the leaves that covered the ground. Deer had been laying there moments before. We looked all round for the deer but the snow was so falling too hard and we could barely even see the tracks they left when the departed. He pointed to their bedding spot, took my off my glove and pressed my palm to the bare ground. It was warm.
"You feel that" he whispered. I nodded. Then he put his head close to the ground over the other spot and took in a deep breath in through his nose.
"Come here", he said. I did the same as he had done.
"Do you Smell that?" he asked me.
I smelled something but I wasn't sure what it was. I nodded my head again. "Imagine how we must smell to them." he whispered, "They can probably smell us now."
Thanksgiving morning when we woke up, the snow had stopped falling. There was a foot. Its my understanding that much more snow fell that Thanksgiving here around Albany but, I hardly knew where Albany was. My other brother got all excited about something outside. Across the the valley in McCandless Township, there were a dozen deer. You could see them perfectly, their bodies silhouetted against the fresh snow. I remember some being bedded down, some were nibbling buds from the trees and bushes. There was one clearing away the snow with its hoof so it could graze. I had never seen so many deer, never out my window. We watched them for an hour until the last one disappeared over the ridge on the far side of the valley. It was the only we ever saw so many deer at the house in Pittsburgh.
That was a very long time ago, when it used to be winter on thanksgiving. At least that's how I remember the holiday as a kid.
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