It's 1982,and I'm a full grown adult, albeit still living in the house I grew up in, on E. 8th Street in Davis, California. I was working at the Radio Shack warehouse in Woodland (to youngens reading this, a warehouse is where merchandise is stored after manufacturing until called upon by the brick and mortar stores to be shipped to them. Back in the day, it wasn't all Chinese. Most of what we consumed in the United States was at least manufactured here, perhaps with overseas parts. Then those things would be trucked to a regional warehouse to be put with similar items. When an order came in from a brick and mortar store - we didn't yet have the internet - people like me, called "pickers", would then walk the warehouse and pick up things on the order. It was kind of like grocery shopping. We had carts we could use for smaller orders and for larger orders we used pallets, moved around by pallet jacks. Sometimes I'd be at the packing station, those were called "packers" and no we didn't have to wear green and yellow! But we DID have to make certain that anything with a magnet, including old fashioned batteries, not the ones that power the phone I'm writing on, but those that power my old fashioned clocks, smoke detectors and boomboxes - Google that last one - next to these big movie discs that looked like vinyl records - those I know you've seen! If they were next to each other, the magnets would "wipe" the content off of the discs, like Hilary Clinton did with her emails.)
I met a lot of people while working there as we were hired in September for the Christmas season. One guy I really liked was named Phil. He was from Australia, which, being part of the United Kingdom, doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. Back then, we didn't think of the Natives that were displaced, just as Australia didn't think of the Aborigines they displaced. But back to Phil.
He had no place to go for the holiday, so I invited him to my home. Actually, my MOM'S home as she used to remind us every day. Poor Phil didn't know what he'd gotten himself into.
The word DYSFUNCTIONAL wasn't around then, but my family was the certain definition of the word. Our mom was undiagnosed Bipolar, then called Manic depressive, and ya just didn't know who you'd get at any given moment. Our half brother, who grew up with us, had mental illness on both sides of his family. His dad committed suicide when he was a toddler, allowing my dad, who'd fallen in love with our crazy mom when she was 16, to marry her. I believe he even divorced his first wife, Jackie, just to be with my mom. He ALWAYS fell for the crazy ones. (He was married 3 times.) Our older sister had just married a wonderful man that June - and they're STILL together - and lived in San Francisco. I was the middle child still living at home, as was our brother and my younger sister as she was still in high school. Add in a narcissistic maternal grandmother, a drunk uncle - we literally had to hide the hard booze when he came over - and our dad, whom our mom had kicked out 3 years prior as well as our single maternal aunt and, well to put it nicely, Freud would've considered it a Christmas present!
Mom was cooking, cutting something up with a butcher knife when she told me to put earrings on, so I'd look nice. All 3 of us girls had our ears pierced at 13, a sign of coming into the adult world. Because I hadn't consistently worn earrings, the holes had closed up and I told her so. The rage that came across her face was frightening as she took the knife and chased me around the house, saying she'd give me new holes! At some point, I think dad stepped in. Despite the court order she had taken out 3 years earlier to have him removed from the premises, she still loved him.
My sister and I set the table and we all sat down for the big meal, with Phil next to me and my single aunt on the other side. After someone said the Catholic grace that starts, "Bless us our Lord...", we dug in to eat.
At some point mom got mad at dad and since both were seated at the end of the table, mom threw a roll at him. It almost turned into a dood fight! Poor Phil was trying to wrap his head around everything. After we ate our fill, my sister and I cleared away the dishes for dad to clean. It was always his role to clean up as it was mom's role to cook, even though he was a guest in the house.
We had pie and coffee for dessert then retreated to the living room to watch TV. Yes, we had a console television and we had gotten a color TV a few months earlier. We grew up watching TV in black and white. To this day I could show you what color grey Mr. Green Jean's pants were!
After some TV watching, it was time for the guests to leave. Our drunk uncle or our half brother took grandma home to her apartment in Woodland while my single aunt assured me, she'd make certain that Phil got home okay. Dad stayed to wash the dishes then drove the 6 blocks to his apartment.
Phil didn't know what he'd gotten into, all right. Because as I found out years later from my then married aunt, Phil had gotten into her pants that night!
Ah yes, Thanksgiving 50 years ago.
And I can recall it just as if it happened today.
I hope YOU had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
