Document text
Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Traditions reflect shift in lifestyles When Zero Mostel sang the song "Tradition" in the Broadway musical "Fiddler On the Roof" some 30 years ago, traditions were still major factors in our lives. In the relatively short time since then, many of our long-standing traditions slowly have begun to fade away. Take Thanksgiving, for example. A traditional family holiday, Thanksgiving is entering a new phase, just as family life in general is changing. At the turn of the last century, the largest segment of the population was tied to the farm. Back then, extended families were the model, with mother and father producing lots of children who could help out on the farm. Many families also had grandparents living in the big farmhouse. They played a great part in making the operation of the farm a success. A Rockwell painting of a Thanksgiving at such a farm honors an event -- a gathering of several generations -- that is slowly becoming a thing of the past because of divorces and blended families and single moms. I wrote several years ago about my family's annual trips to grandmother's house. The dinner was the highlight of the year for us. The women cooked and baked until there was enough food to last for a week, but most of it was eaten in the first two days. My wife, Nora, remembers those big dinners at the farmhouse south of Klamath Falls where she was raised. She would sit by the living room window, watching for the cars to arrive. Of all the visitors on that holiday, the one Nora enjoyed seeing the most was her Aunt Elma, because she would always bring her famous burnt-sugar cake with burnt-sugar frosting. She says you would have had to be there to appreciate how wonderful that cake was. After Nora and I had married and moved to Portland, Thanksgiving was a lonely time for us. I worked the early evening shift at KGW in downtown Portland, and we hadn't been in town long enough to make many friends. On Thanksgiving Nora would ride a bus downtown to join me for the last part of my shift. She remembers how lonely it felt to be the only passenger on the bus, and how she watched sheets of newsprint being whirled around by the wind in the middle of the street. The bus route would take her past many houses with cars parked in front. Looking through the windows she would see groups of people. The only people on the streets were transients. The most unusual Thanksgiving we ever experienced was in 1988 when our son Joe, a real world traveler in those days, persuaded us to spend our vacation in England. He found a low rate for us on the flight and booked hotel rooms, and two weeks later we were off. Joe arrived in London a week before we did, and he met us at the airport. It was his third visit to that country, and it made all the difference to have an experienced guide. Thursday of the first week was Thanksgiving. We noted in one of the newspapers that Harrods, the huge British department store, was having an "American Thanksgiving dinner" in its huge dining room and we decided to go. We had experienced English cooking morning, noon and night for several days by then, and we were not highly impressed. Yet we thought, what could they do to ruin a dinner of turkey, gravy, potatoes, cranberries and all the rest? We arrived at Harrods shortly before noon that Thursday. The dining room was a huge space with rich wood paneling. The tables all had starched tablecloths and outsized white napkins stuffed into the water glasses. The waitresses, about a dozen of them, were a matched set. Each had the look of the Irish and appeared to be near to retirement age. They wore long dark dresses with white aprons and white caps on their heads. Our server delivered the first courses, soup and salad, and then pointed us to the buffet table on the other side of the room. A uniformed chef with a very tall hat carved servings from a large turkey, and then we filled our plates with stuffing, boiled vegetables, potatoes and cranberry sauce. An American Thanksgiving meal it wasn't -- everything was very bland and mostly boiled. And the turkey was rather dry. But it did give us another story to tell the folks back home. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA