My earliest memories of Thanksgiving involve my dad taking me to Newark to watch the Bamberger's parade. He used to take me up onto the second floor of the old Schickhaus building, where he worked, so that I could see everything without being cold. On the way home we'd pick up my aunt and my grandmother in North Newark and bring them home with us. By the time we got home, my uncle and aunt and two cousins from Union would be at the house, and we'd have the traditional dinner. My mother usually fixed turnips, and I hated the darned things. Instead, I do the sweet-potato-and-marshmallow casserole thingy now. The creamed onions that I serve now are a holdover from those days; my cousins called them "sourballs." After dinner, during which time my uncle would have overstuffed himself to the absolute nth degree, he'd go and lie down on the sofa and tell my cousin that she couldn't jump on him because he'd "vomit all over" if she did. My other aunt usually would walk us kids down to the Passaic River, which was just at the end of our street, and we'd throw stones into the water (provided the tide was in) long enough to allow my uncle to recover a bit. There was no thought of watching football on TV; nobody in our family was into football. By the time I was in high school, my aunt in Newark had married and she and my new uncle and my grandma had moved to North Carolina; and my uncle in Union had died and my aunt and cousins had moved to the shore. So that was the end of the family Thanksgiving dinners. Sadly, I didn't grow up in a home where the "reason for the season" was recognized. We didn't take time to thank God for what he'd done for us over the previous year; we just ate and had fun. Fortunately, the Good Lord woke me up when I was twenty, and things are different now. Doris in Colorado (Up2Nutrix@aol.com) "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." -- Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr