Thanksgiving On The Bayou

Granny, who much preferred cuddling a cute puppy to making a pot roast.

My Granny wasn't the best of cooks - although I always liked her cooking. But, then, I like my meatloaf slightly burned. The only time I turned up my nose at her cooking was the time she made rice from a box to impress her sister, Aunt Pearl. I'm not really into fancy food.

Great Aunt Pearl, who apparently liked her rice fancy.

To this day, I have to have Granny's oyster dressing at least once a year. The directions go something like this: "Rice, oysters, chicken livers, celery and onions (if desired). Cook and mix together." It's fabulous and really, really easy to make, which probably was the attraction.

Cooking wasn't really Granny's thing. She'd rather garden, read or watch her stories. Oh, how she loved her stories (soap operas for those of you without story-loving grandmas).

Granny loved the holidays. 

I like to read as well. I've also inherited her love for the holidays. I'm a sucker for them. I can remember helping set out her tabletop manger and ceramic Christmas tree. Just out of reach in my memory is some sort of ladder that I was fascinated with as a child. I think it had elves on it and they were trying to string lights. On Christmas Eve, we'd walk down the street to Midnight Mass at the little Catholic church in Gibson.

This year, my mom told me the story of her first Thanksgiving. She remembers it because she was 9 at the time.

Granny, my mom and the rest of that side of the family are Cajun. One hundred percent Cajun. No DNA testing needed to figure out that lineage. Their ancestors immigrated to Nova Scotia from France, got the boot by the English, went back to France and eventually set sail for Louisiana. My granny used to tell a story about the voyage from France to Louisiana. The ship sailed in 1785. Granny was born in 1913. And she talked about that voyage like it was a cruise she took as a child. In other words, she was a sixth-generation American with one foot planted firmly back in France. Granny's mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother may have been born in Louisiana, but she spoke French as her first language. Her life revolved around Cajun French and the Catholic Church, not the Founding Fathers.

We're Granny's first four children. Oui, we speak French. Doesn't everyone?

But back to Thanksgiving in Bayou L'Ourse (outside Morgan City) circa 1960-something. Granny got her first television set the year my mother entered fourth grade. Soon, Granny learned about a publication called "TV Guide" and got herself a subscription to that. It was in "TV Guide" that she read about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I don't know who Cara Williams is, but this issue of TV Guide brought us Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving morning, Granny woke my Aunt Marilyn and my mom and settled them in front of the television. She told them they were going to watch a parade while she worked in the kitchen.

At some point, my mother wandered into the kitchen and asked what in the world was going on. It wasn't even 10 o'clock, and Granny was festooning a ham with pineapples and cherries. I'd like to imagine she'd already made the oyster dressing.

Granny explained that they were celebrating Thanksigiving. "It's not really our holiday," she said. "But we're celebrating it anyway."

We've been celebrating Thanksgiving ever since. We've even taken the big leap of transitioning to a turkey for the main course.