Thanksgiving Celebrations

This is how most Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Since it is both a big family holiday and an eating holiday, decisions must be made about who will host the dinner and who will be cooking and what. We travel. We eat until we can hold no more. This year, we are having two Thanksgivings. On Saturday, we drove to Georgia (about 150mi/300km, 2.5 hours, but whose counting?) to have our first Thanksgiving with my mother-in-law. This was easy because she was eager to have the dinner at her house and to do all of the cooking, so we didn’t have to do anything except show up and eat. On the way to Georgia, we passed through Clemson, SC, home of the Clemson University Tigers football team. Saturdays in the Fall are big days for college football games, and football is a rather important part of Thanksgiving for some. While Thomas pumped the gas, Bram and I wandered over to buy a bag of boiled peanuts from a man who was boiling them in a giant pot as big as those plastic tubs that they have the carp in at Christmas in Brno. The most important thing you need to know about boiled peanuts is that they taste really good and that the correct pronunciation involves not really making that /i/ sound.
The second Thanksgiving we will have will be in South Georgia in a tiny town called Lumber City. It is where my mother went to high school, where her sisters grew up, and where one of my aunts will be hosting us at her newly acquired hurricane refuge house. A hurricane refuge house is a home that some people on the coast have so that when they evacuate for a storm, they have a place to go to. Since my aunt has quite a lot of pets, not all of whom get along with each other, this a good thing. My mother, her sisters and I will do all of the cooking. There will be turkey and dressing and potatoes and turnips and pumpkin pie, and whatever else we decide to cook. At any rate, it will be too much food. It always is. The menfolk will sit around and talk and wait for us to order them around. After we set the table and tell God thank you, we will eat ourselves silly, which for me isn't very far. I have already told you that this a big family holiday. That means that most Americans travel for this holiday and that they spend time with family, usually lots of family, family that a lot of people might admit they are thankful to have to see only once a year. That won't be the case for me. I love my parents and my aunts. They adore me. What's not to be grateful for in that?