I Can't Do the Talks, Like the Talk on the TV

Here's me in the Fall of 1985 at Standish and Hickey (hee hee) State Park right before we moved down to work at the ski resort.

Well, kids. It's late and so I'm going to steal a lovely Thanksgiving Day post from the old blog. This was written in November of 2005. It was probably the second week of blogging for me. Here it is:

It's Thanksgiving and we went down to Ottumwa, mostly to see my sister and her kids but my cousins were there too. The drive down, during the day was nice. We went through Kalona and saw a few Amish buggies trotting along. On the way home it was dark and I always stress out about the deer at night. Luckily, we didn't see any, but we did drive through a strange patch of fog. I know it was an optical illusion, but it looked like there was a big truck in front of us that just stopped in the road. I slowed way down and then realized that there was nothing there. Coadster saw it too and she is still sure it was some kind of apparition. She always thinks everything is haunted and to her it is totally logical that a Southeast Iowa ghost trucker would appear before us and then vanish.

Anytime I go on a roadtrip with my sister she asks me to make top ten lists or she has me tell her what my favorite thing, experience, person or whatever is. Especially when she's tired because it keeps her awake while she's driving.

So, while I was driving home and afraid I would nod off, I made myself think of what my favorite Thanksgiving was. I could think of plenty of shitty Thanksgivings I've had but I think my favorite one was when I was twenty. The guy I was going out with at the time and I had just moved to Big Bear Lake, California and gotten jobs at Snow Summit Ski Resort. We had previously been working for the California Conservation Corps up in Northern California, where we only got paid once at the beginning of the month and had to wait another week for our last checks. We had almost no money and were staying at our friend's parent's Summer cabin until we could get our own place. Earlier in the day, we took the shuttle van to the store and spent the last of our money on frozen eggrolls. It had just snowed and so we holed up in the cabin and ate our eggroll feast and watched The Twilight Zone marathon that was on one of the channels we were able to pick up from Los Angeles. At the time, we kept laughing at how pathetic we were, but now it feels like the perfect way to spend the holiday.