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I will always remember my first Thanksgiving as a married woman.  As a brand new stepmother, I was determined to make the holiday special for the step-kids, which I assumed meant The Turkey Dinner.  Now, I am not much of a cook, and had never done the whole turkey-dinner from scratch thing. I was working full-time and a part-time job, which meant I was less than thrilled to take my single day off work to spend it in the kitchen…..but I was up to the challenge.

Martha Stewart will never need to fear competition from Elizabeth Camden, but I was proud of that meal.  The turkey was fine, I made ALL the associated fixings from scratch, I was thrilled down to my toes at how well the gravy turned out, and the whole apartment smelled amazing.

The reaction of my family?  “We don’t really like turkey.”  It was a battle to get them to turn off the TV off (I ultimately settled for the mute button.)  As proof that men sometimes just don’t get it, my husband was the biggest offender of the group, fixing himself something from the fridge because of his indifference to turkey, then parking it in front of the football game while the rest of us were still eating.

That was seventeen years ago.  It was the first and last turkey dinner I’ve ever made.

The following Thanksgiving, I polled the family for their favorite meal.  BBQ came out on top.  Okay!  This is something I can do!   Aside from the meat, I buy everything else ready-made.  Bush’s Baked Beans, a vat of mashed potatoes from the local deli, frozen garlic bread that heats in the oven, and a couple of Marie Calendar pies.  It is a feast the entire family enjoys, and a tradition Bill and I look forward to every year. The kids are now both grown and live out of state with families of their own, so it’s just me and Bill, but we both love our barbequed-Thanksgiving.

Oh, and I’ve given up battling Thanksgiving Day football.  Sometimes, if you can’t beat ‘em, you’ve got to join them.

Sunday will be the 100^th anniversary of the end of World War I. In commemoration, I am sharing a photograph of my grandfather, who served in the war. In 1917 he was a nineteen-year old clerk in a Milwaukee bank. He and his brother John, both sons of German immigrants, volunteered in hope of getting a more favorable posting rather than waiting for the draft to catch up with them.

My grandfather got the lucky draw: he ended up serving as a typist in a North Carolina army training camp, but John went to France where he was badly gassed and sent back home. John recovered, but was never quite the same either physically or mentally. My grandfather looked after him for the rest of John’s sadly short life, considering it a small price to pay.

My own father was named after John, and I had the great privilege to know my grandfather quite well. He had a mind like a steep trap and shared countless fascinating details about life in the army camp, military politics, and life after the war. I learned so much from his insight into German-American immigrant culture and life in American cities as the industrial revolution got underway. I’ve ultimately funneled a lot of that insight into my novels, and I sometimes wonder what he would think if he knew how big a role he played in shaping my novels.

Some of my fellow authors have also posted stories about their family members who were involved in the war. You can read about them here: http://bethanyfiction.com/2018/11/08/ww1/