My Own Little Corner

My mother cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner. (Dig that crazy wallpaper!)  Thanksgiving was very informal at our house. Our grandparents were our only guests. That's my grandfather sitting at the head of the table, keeping my mother company. God bless him, he'd wear a suit and tie just to bring in the newspaper. My father and brothers were probably in the living room, with full bellies, no doubt engrossed in that day's football games.  My exhausted mother would undoubtedly agree with  Erma Bombeck who said, "Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not a coincidence." Unfortunately, I was no mother's helper. To quote Charlie Brown:  "I can't cook a Thanksgiving dinner. All I can make is cold cereal and maybe toast." My only contribution that day was the photo. Now that I'm (much) older and have prepared a few Thankgiving dinners of my own,  I appreciate my mother ev...

On a Sunday evening in 1968, we gather around our RCA Victor color television for the annual showing of “The Wizard of Oz.” My father settles into his armchair, arranges his pack of Marlboros and an ashtray within reach and glances at his watch. Two hours until “Bonanza.” With a resigned sigh, he opens a newspaper. “Oz” is not on his must-see viewing list.   I stretch out on the carpet, chin propped in my hands, feeling warm and toasty in freshly laundered PJs. Huntley and Brinkley are wrapping up the nightly news. Lamplight casts ghostly images of battle and protests and unrest upon the walls; the room reverberates with the sounds of gunfire and whirling helicopters and chatter about the recent assassination of a black King with a booming voice.  Charlie, my ten-year old brother, sprawls across from me, surrounded by his GI Joe action figures and announces how he can’t wait until he’s old enough to go fight in that fiery place called Vietnam. I’m only seven and ad...