Nick Jimenez
Nick
Jimenez, Caller-Times editor, writes a weekly editorial column Sundays.
He can be reached at 361-886-3787 or
jimenezn@caller.com.
Thursday, November 25, 1999
Cherished traditions
Like Tevye, the Jewish milkman in "Fiddler on the Roof,'' I'm a stickler for tradition.
New-fangled stuff? You can have it.
I'm just now coming to terms with automatic transmissions. I had to see if they were really going to last.
I held on to my rotary dial phone until the bitter end. Those of you wondering what rotary dial phones are can think of yourselves as deprived. All I can see that touch-tone service brought was the ability to immediately connect you with that annoying voice that happily tells you that "I'm not at my desk right now, but if you leave a message yada, yada, yada."
In other words, forget it.
Y2K? I have a Royal manual typewriter close to my side that will not only keep on plugging away when Times Square goes dark, but can also serve as a boat anchor, it's so heavy.
I have yielded to some of the newer stuff. How we could have opened up the West, much less heated up a quick hot dog, without the microwave, I'll never know.
But when it comes to Thanksgiving, I give no quarter. I want my Thanksgiving traditions or it just isn't the same.
First off, the day must begin by watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on the tube. Why a parade in New York City - one that has its origins in trying to push Christmas sales - should become part of my tradition in South Texas, I don't remember, but now it is.
Perhaps because I know that there will always be the humongous balloons, the Rockettes will be dancing again, the high-school bands from towns I never heard of will be marching down Broadway again, and at the end Santa Claus in all his merchandising glory will appear.
Sure, there are other Thanksgiving parades, but you are talking to a guy who still gets misty-eyed at the end of "Miracle on 34th Street."
And I want my jellied cranberry sauce. Not whole berries, mind you, or sauce berries, but jellied sauce. I want to hear that comforting smack when the tube of red cranberry jelly slides out of the can.
One year, in the usual confused rush to the end, we got the wrong stuff. It just wouldn't do. I had to search the convenience stores until I came up with the jellied sauce or throw the turkey away and have scrambled eggs.
Of course, the turkey must be front and center. Turkey might seem the most obvious tradition, but getting hold of the bird is not always so easy. My wife once spent a Thanksgiving in Mexico and turkeys simply weren't filling the frozen food bins as they do here in the good old U.S.A. While they are common at Christmas, turkey just isn't seen much in Mexican food stores in November. She had to do a wide search before she could celebrate Thanksgiving the way it was meant to be.
And there must be football. Pro football has now come to dominate Turkey Day, but it wasn't always that way. Miller and Ray used to annually clash on Thanksgiving Day in the 1950s, and, of course, Thanksgiving in Texas used to mean the Aggies and the Longhorns would renew their annual rivalry.
This year's A&M-Texas game will be saddened by the bonfire tragedy. How could it be otherwise? Though neither Aggie nor Longhorn, I still associate the game with Thanksgiving Day. I rue the day the two schools gave in to TV and moved the game. I don't know about you, but midmorning on Friday just doesn't work for me. Did they move the Macy's parade to Friday? No.
As much as I'm attached to all these traditions, I could toss them all if I could only keep just one. And that's simply being with family and friends on this day.
Thanksgiving is uniquely American. Other countries celebrate independence, workers, the New Year, veterans, and national heroes, but we Americans have set aside this day simply to say thank you, and with good reason. From the Pilgrims who withstood that awful winter of 1620 to the newest immigrant, we know we have a lot to be thankful for - and who to thank for it. And, in a uniquely American way, the Pilgrims, football, cranberries, drumsticks and those long Thanksgiving afternoons with loved ones all work together to create a special day.
(Nick Jimenez can be reached by phone at 886-3787 or by e-mail at jimenezn@caller.com.)
