The Grandparents Rice with Mom and young Gary (not yet having dressed for dinner) sit before a resplendent holiday table (photo by Robert Rice)

Well, it's that time again...the second half of November. Like a perennial tidal wave, this time keeps coming back, nearly drowning me in a wave of sorrow.

It's bad enough with those chilly autumn skies, and those windy nights, and the brown and yellow leaves blowing up the driveway with their swishing sounds, and the all-too-short days, and the all-too-long nights.

Yeah, the long nights. I never realized how long a night could be.

Two events happened in the second half of November that changed my life. The first was the death of President John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, and the second was the death of my dear mother, Betty Rice, on November 27th, 2004. The first event probably changed the lives of most Americans living at that time. The second event was personal. Real personal.

There's a third event around this same time, of course, and that's Thanksgiving. Even that normally happy and festive occasion was tempered with the sobering reality that this feast signaled the beginning of the end for many Native American peoples. I remember Grandfather telling me never to reveal that I was part Native American.

There were good reasons for that admonition. In 1830, The Indian Removal Act forced many Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi on forced marches, leaving their homes and, often, nearly everything they owned. Those who stayed behind tended to keep their mouths shut and their identities secret.

Thanksgiving, therefore, was not "our" holiday at all. There was nothing for us to be thankful about, except maybe that we were still alive.

Of course, that was only a part of our family heritage, so of course, we did the Thanksgiving thing like the rest of America.

Those were huge events in the heady '50's and '60's. The women worked like dogs, starting the night before, preparing the stuffing with secret recipes as well-kept as any military secret. Their floral print aprons and gorgeous dresses accentuated the atmosphere of snow-white crocheted tablecloths set with the finest English bone china, linen, sterling silver and crystal.

Although our family was "middle class," the grandparents always had the linen and the sterling, the crystal and the china. Back then, these items might have been their only valuable possessions, but they had them.

My grandmother also crocheted her own tablecloths and embroided her own napkins. There were often three forks and as many knives at each setting. There were fresh carrots and stuffed celery from the garden, and we each had our own salt dips for those vegetables. The meat had to be able to be cut with the fork only, or it would not be served. We always had one hand on our laps and no elbows on the table. White shirts and ties were required for the menfolk, regardless of age. Passing the food always went from left to right, so that the heavy silver plates of food were received by strong right hands. As a lefty, I just had to make the adjustment to all this. Our favorite time as children, naturally, was eating the hand-cranked ice cream waiting outside on the card table under the old grape arbor. The luckiest kid got to lick the paddles of the old ice cream bucket.

Before all else transpired, The Prayer was raised to God Almighty for His bountiful gifts. The Prayer was seldom long or complex. It was, however, The Prayer. It was the most important part of the meal.

The table talk was polite and reserved. Topics that were inappropriate were ignored when brought up, or faced down with a quick and piercing look from Grandfather. All cues came from Grandfather. It's no accident either, that many Native Americans refer to Diety as "Grandfather." The connection was easily made back then...

After dinner, the menfolk retired to the study, where pipes were lit and stories were told. The women sat around the dining room table with their own topics of interest. Occasionally the children would go out back in the woods, or up to their rooms for play. There would not, however, be an occasion for changing into play clothes on Thanksgiving. That was for another time.

These days, things have changed. Lots. The Prayer, if it's even said, has become "a prayer": an almost anecdotal afterthought in character. Turkeys are often purchased pre-cooked, prepared by persons unknown, and filled with who-knows-what from who-knows-where. Side dishes are microwave-zapped, served with butter-in-the-tub and drinks-in-the-can, along with football-on-the-tube.

Aprons have just about gone, as have dresses, shirts and ties, as well as manners and decorum. Profanity so often laces the Thanksgiving experience touchdown after fumble, as often does an excess of alcohol.

Those of you who've lived as long as I have remember these changes. Those of you too young to remember will just have to take our word for it. Not all things get better in life. Not by a long, long shot.

Still, there is an important lesson in all of this. The oldsters back then had just as many aches, pains, and sorrows going on in their lives as we have today. Or more...with this difference:

We baby-boomer types tend to gripe about everything we can think of. If we get a stubbed toe, it's off to the doctor and a dizzying variety of tests. We cry, we whine, we wring our hands at nothing at all. While trying to save whales and seals and end world hunger, we so often forget about the anguish in our own backyards.

Back then, those folks around the table...those folks who experienced the worst economic depression in world history...those folks who survived the horrors of both World Wars One and Two...they did everything possible to make us happy.

These days, some people talk about America's, or even Lakewood's, potential "decline." Some even talk about having to get by with less. Well, if that were true, maybe this would not be such a bad thing, after all.

Maybe we'd learn not to be such crybabies. Maybe we'd learn to roll up our sleeves and work our problems out, like they did in the old days. Maybe we'd rediscover The Prayer again. Maybe, just maybe, we'd try to show our children how to be happy again.

That is, if we even remember how to do that ourselves. God help us all, if we have forgotten.

The pulse of the city would then have nothing left to do but stop.

(BRIAN-CAN YOU LIGHTEN UP THE OLD PHOTO A BIT? THANKS GR)