My grannies were alike in two ways. One was that they were both hard workers who largely raised their families alone. In my mom’s case, her father disappeared when she, the oldest child, was nine. Her father was traced to California and Saudi Arabia in later years, but he never, as far as I know, returned to Illinois. In my dad’s case, his father was an alcoholic who didn’t, I gather, contribute much to the family for most of their time together. The other way the grannies were alike was that they loved their families very much. It’s a great pity that neither lived to see their great grandchildren.

Granny Oliver and Granny Cook were mostly different, however.

Granny Oliver was a quiet, somewhat drab, bird-like woman who never uttered a harsh word; I think the strongest thing I ever heard her say was “Oh, heck.” Looking back, I now realize that she was in some ways surprisingly progressive, though: she was one of the first in our little town to have a TV, for example, and even though her house was somewhat ramshackle, she had indoor plumbing when outhouses were still common. One of my favorite memories is of the times she made apple butter outside in her big black “kittle”: it perfumed the entire neighborhood. She also made memorable breaded tomatoes, “stretch burgers” (hamburgers that were about 50% cracker crumbs), fatback sandwiches, fried rabbit, fried river fish, squirrel gravy, and blackberry cobbler.

My mom’s mom had two personae. One was that of a sweet old lady who was generous, accomplished at caring for the sick, a wonderful cook, and very fond of all children. The other was that of a kind of rebel who had been the first woman in her family to bob her hair, learn to drive, and get a divorce—and who was loud, loved to laugh, could swear like a sailor, could tell a good story, and enjoyed making people feel uncomfortable. One of my favorite memories is of when she and Aunt Blanche and Aunt May were chatting: they all talked at the same time, one looking down, one looking up or away, and the other looking alternately at the other two. I also remember some of the special things she cooked: “lizard” (a kind of pudding), slabs (fried bread dough), divinity (a kind of candy that I didn’t really like), light rolls (large, high buns), fried chicken, and home-made french fries. Another thing I remember is what she told us about family history—which family members had moved to Illinois from “Back East,” which had sided with the Union and which with the Confederacy during the War Between the States, which had seen Abraham Lincoln, which had seen Native Americans when they still lived in Illinois.

How I miss my grannies! What a gift it was to know and be loved by them!

  This is a Thanksgiving story . . . kind of.

When I was a kid, my family spent Thanksgiving Day at the house of one of my dad’s aunts, Diana Adams (“Aunt Di”), with my dad’s mother and his brothers, sisters, and their families—plus Aunt Di, of course. Aunt Di lived on a farm in  Clay County, Illinois, about halfway between my home town of Louisville and another small town, Kinmundy. We enjoyed these family get-togethers for several years; I think I must’ve been 10 or 11 when things changed, and we began celebrating the holiday in our own home.

The routine at Aunt Di’s was always the same. First, the families arrived—most coming from Louisville or from nearby locations (including Xenia and Centralia), but some traveling to Aunt Di’s from much more distant places (Decatur and Chicago). My dad’s brothers Bob and Morris (pronounced “Morse”) and sometimes Uncle Bob’s friend Lowell came from Louisville. Dad’s brother Bill, his wife Norma, and their children Billy and Candace drove from Xenia, and dad’s brother Scott, his wife Lyndall, and their daughter Vicky (now “Viki”) made the trek from Centralia. Dad’s sister Helen Oliver Kincaid, her husband Leroy (“LEEroy”), and their children (Diane, Louise, Ronnie, and maybe one more) came from near Louisville, and Dad’s sister Marjorie (“Marge”) Oliver McAllister, her husband Bud (his “real” name was Don, but we never used it), and their children (Gene, Mike, Tommy, Tony, Debbie, and maybe another) made the drive from near Flora. Dad’s brother Raymond, his wife Stella, and their children Raymie, Gaye, Pam, and Janet traveled from Decatur, and Dad’s brother brother Elmer, his wife Juanita, and their son John Edgar made the trip from Chicago.

The aunts began talking and unpacking food as soon as each arrived, the uncles “loafed” until all of them were there and then went “hunting” for rabbits or squirrels (though they seldom brought any trophies back with them: hmmm), and the kids got in everybody’s way until they were sent outside to play. Meanwhile, the aunts continued talking and doing whatever they needed to do with the food. 

When the uncles returned (always boisterous, full of bonhomie, and some, I would now guess, rather, shall we say, high-spirited) and cleaned up, we all squeezed into Aunt Di’s dining room (with its monster philodendron that extended from one corner of the room to two others) and made ready to eat—after someone was asked to “say the blessing.” The blessing was always, mercifully, brief.

Then the main event began, and that’s what I remember best: food, lots of food.

We always had turkey, of course: huge pans of drumsticks and wings and sliced meat, both light and dark. We also had several platters of sliced ham, Mamaw Oliver’s famous candied yams (fried, of course), several kinds of dressing (never stuffing), Southern-style green beans, corn, cranberry sauce (both jellied and in various salads), several big bowls of freshly mashed potatoes, various condiments, pumpkin pies, and one other dessert (about which, more later).

I remember that I was always bedazzled by the many kinds of pumpkin pie. The variety seemed (then, at least) endless, and it kept changing from year to year. Why was that? – Because the aunts (all but one, that is) had an annual competition (which no one ever discussed but which everyone knew about) to see whose pie was the tastiest and most unusual. There were pumpkin chiffon pies, lattice-top pumpkin pies, dark-colored pumpkin pies, light-colored pumpkin pies, pumpkin pies with soft, creamy filling, pumpkin pies with dense, pudding-like filling, spicy pies, bland pies, thick-crusted pies, thin-crusted ones, pies with soggy bottoms, pies with flaky bottoms, and on and on and on and on. And of course when it was time for dessert, each aunt tried to outshout the others with some variation of “Be sure you try my pie.” 

There was, however, one non-participant in the Great Oliver Pumpkin Pie Throwdown: Aunt Norma. She never brought pumpkin pie; instead, she always brought a cake—and I remember those cakes better than anything else.

Aunt Norma’s cakes were never the same except in one respect: they could only be described as outrageous—not because they tasted bad or were decadently rich (they were neither), but because of the color palette(s) Aunt Norma used when she made them: they always featured one startling color for the frosting and at least one completely different, but equally vibrant, color for the cake itself. I say “at least one” because sometimes the cakes had more than one layer, each with a different color, and because sometimes the colors were even incorporated into a checkboard effect (How did she do that?). They might, for example, have magenta frosting over neon green and orange cake, dayglow orange frosting over violet and/or pink cake, multicolored frosting swirls over cake with different (though just as exuberantly contrasting) swirls, and so on. I should also add that we never knew what psychedelic wonders awaited us until the first piece of cake was cut—always to oohs and aahs and good-natured laughter and exclamations like “Well, Norm’s done it again!” and “Aunt Norma’s cake this year is even weirder than last year’s!” and “Norma, if you ever bring a ‘normal’ cake or even a pumpkin pie, we’ll all die of apoplectic shock!”

All of us—adults and kids alike—always looked forward to Aunt Norma’s outrageous cakes for, I think, several reasons. One was to see if she’d bring the same creation two years in a row. She didn’t. Another was to see if she’d ever turn things inside out by bringing an outrageous pumpkin pie instead of a cake. She didn’t do that, either. Yet another was to see if she’d expand her bag of tricks and do something equally startling but from an entirely different context—like dressing up like a Maharani and riding in from Xenia on the back of an elephant. She also didn’t do anything like that. What she did—again and again and again—was to bring her shockingly distinctive cakes.

I admire Aunt Norma for her inventiveness, her discreetly picaresque sense of humor, the way she kept us guessing from year to year, and the high drama she created for us all as we waited for someone to cut into the cake and reveal what was inside. This bundle of memories is crystal clear and comes flooding back every time I remember the Thanksgiving trips to Aunt Di’s house.

Thanks, Aunt Norma! I wish I could see you to give you a big hug, share a laugh, and say “I’m thankful for you!”

I’m overwhelmed by the significance of the outcome of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

I voted for Obama, and despite the fact that he seemed to be a serious contender from the beginning of his campaign, I was never very confident that he would actually gather the highest number of electoral votes. Further, the choice of Obama wasn’t the only amazing thing about this year’s election. Until July, Hilary Rodham Clinton was Obama’s rival as nominee for the Democratic presidential candidate, and another woman, Alaskan governor Sarah Palin was selected by the Republican Party to become its Vice Presidential candidate. All of these choices—Obama, Clinton, Palin—would have been considered revolutionary not so long ago and unthinkable when I was a young man in the 1960s.

I’m proud to be alive to witness these astounding developments: they indicate a major change in racial attitudes among the U.S. electorate.

I’m not so naive, however, as to think that the entire voting-age U.S. population is now committed to diversity: I think, instead, that a significant majority has simply shown that it favors (demands?) change. In addition, I find it interesting—and also disturbing—that much is being said about Obama’s African-American heritage. To many Americans, the key descriptor here is African—which has for generations been at odds with the U.S. stereotype that “true Americans” are individuals with pallid complexions and a predominantly Western European family background. In actuality, African-Americans whose family backgrounds extend back to the days of slavery are largely biracial or multiracial; many, like Obama, even have an equal or nearly equal mix of “black” and “white.”

I could continue with related thoughts, but it seems to me that it’s too early to say anything further just now. It’s enough, I think, to reiterate that I’m proud to be alive during this astounding presidential election; I sincerely hope that it hasn’t been just an isolated incident but, rather, the beginning of a whole new era.

From the time I was very young until much later in my life, my mom often asked me if I could remember “Granny Pearson” (who wasn’t really my grandmother) holding me as she sat in her rocking chair on the porch of the Pearson Hotel (actually a boarding house) in my home town of Louisville, Illinois. I never could remember Granny P., but I do remember a very minor event that happened just before we moved from the “hotel” to our first home. I was about three years old at that time (my age in the photo). I’m not really sure why I remember this incident, but I can almost always see it clearly in my mind’s eye—and I can sometimes hear it and occasionally pick up smells as well.

In the memory, my father and mother and I were visiting the empty house where we were about to move. Though new to Mom and Dad, the house was an old one and didn’t have kitchen cabinets, so we were there to do some measurements. I recall that Dad was using a folding rule, and I was “helping” him by using a small plastic protractor. The protractor was brightly colored, but when I play back the memory, the color shifts—sometimes bright red, sometimes bright green; I don’t know why. My sister, by the way, wasn’t in the scene; maybe she was somewhere other than in that very empty kitchen (it had a sink and nothing else) because, unlike what the photo suggests, she was a very energetic, active, rambunctious kid and could never stay in one place for long.

If someone else were telling me the tale of the protractor, she or he would probably say, “You wanted to be just like Daddy.” That may have been the case, but I don’t think so. I was definitely trying to imitate him, but I probably thought we were playing some kind of game—that or performing some sort of weird (but fun) magical ritual. I remember that Dad was moving his folding rule back and forth and up and down in a serious, methodical, linear way and that he kept saying short phrases to Mom, who dutifully wrote each utterance down. Mom probably also asked a hundred questions during the process—since she was talkative (a trait I definitely inherited) and wanted to discuss things, not merely to record them. Dad was not very loquacious, however, so I doubt that any discussion took place. I, unlike Dad, used my protractor rather more freely. I let it run and walk and hop and jump and slide as the spirit moved, and on those rare occasions when the scene has sound, I’m providing a running commentary—in my chirpy three-year-old’s voice—of what’s going on.

The tale of the protractor isn’t actually a story as such; instead, it’s simply a scene with no introduction, no plot, and no denouement. It may, however, provide foreshadowing of other chapters in my life. I think that even though I was only three, it was likely obvious that I was not going to be “just like Daddy.” If so, it was probably also obvious that I would never see the world in quite the same way that Dad did and that my personality would never be very much like his, either. The tale of the protractor does not (to me, anyway) portend an inability to measure up to Dad’s expectations, though; instead, I think it simply shows that even from a very early age, I was noticeably different from him. I’d guess that this is not an uncommon experience.