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Happy Thanksgiving
25 November 2021
Once upon a time in America, families and friends would gather on the fourth Thursday in November to share a large meal over which they would give thanks for their blessings, not the least of which was living in America. They called it Thanksgiving and made it into a national holiday.
Thanksgiving 2018. iPhone 6 Plus at f2.2, 1/4 second, ISO 125. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
We last enjoyed such a warm gathering of family and friends in 2018. The pandemic kept us all apart after that.
And, come to think of it, living in America hasn't been as much of a blessing as it used to be. We still can't believe any of our adult fellow citizens would believe the 2020 election was stolen merely because their candidate lost. When did we become a nation of sore losers who cheat at golf?
But let's remember a happier day.
Even happier days are not without incident, of course. There at the family home on that 2018 Thanksgiving, the overhead light in the bar had blown. None of us could figure out how to get the fixture down to replace the bulbs.
Even our friend the electrician couldn't figure it out.
But the next day with some time on our hands, we tackled the light fixture again. Our brother's youngest son Mario joined us at the bar.
But it was a puzzle that defied us. We felt some bolts or nuts on the metal pan above the wood trim which sits about a finger's width from the ceiling. Six of them. Two on two sides. But if they are nuts, the bolts might fall in if we loosen them. Hmm.
Stumped, we decide to look for a clue in the nine drawers under the bar. So the two of us go through the drawers together, which turns out to be a little history lesson.
We show him his grandfather's Master Dealer certificates from the Oakland Tribune in 1941 and 1942. The war years. And we tell him how his grandfather would go to Memorial Stadium to sell newspapers before every Cal football game.
In another drawer, we find old movies on reels with some splicing supplies. We have to explain what the reels are, how 24 still frames simulate motion, what a splice is.
In the same drawer, we find a set of Kodachrome slides of the Palace of Fine Arts and the Legion of Honor. We hold them up to the light for him and talk about how you would view them in a slide projector. It's technology he's never seen.
Then we find a little envelope labeled "Drum Wrenches" in Dad's handwriting with two flat wrenches in it that is as good as advice from the grave. They fit the nuts on the fixture perfectly.
We get one nut off and the post stays up instead of falling down. So we work on the others, Mario helping on the other side, both of us on step ladders.
One on his side really resists, though. It turns out it's larger than the others, a replacement. So we find a wrench in the basement shop that works and we can finally pull down on the wood frame, pull it off and see the four burned out 60-watt bulbs.
In our tour of the drawers, we discovered a set of four 60-watt bulbs with the movie reels. So we put those in and we have light again. Fiat lux.*
We button it up, aligning the frame and pushing the bolts through and securing one or two before we let our grip relax. Mario has trouble getting one nut aligned (there just isn't room to work) but he we encourage him to persist and he surprises himself by finishing the job.
Once upon a time in America, families and friends got together and made the country, the world even, a better place.