Surviving Thanksgiving

Hello everyone - as I hunker down and prepare to voyage into life's most frightening of times, the Holidays, I've decided that I could use a little holiday myself (or as the Brits call it - a Vacation). I had a pretty good bit halfway slapped together about the Presidential Campaign, but I realized that by the time you read this, somewhere in the neighborhood of 48.7 of you will be in no mood for my cheap jokes. I will say that I'm glad that Utah was spared 4 years of representation by that Brown-nose Party candidate John Swallow. I'm sorry but Swallow is the perfect name for a dorky stiff who just sucked-up to Bush. "Look Mom, I got my picture taken with Dubya!" I couldn't endorse that clown's message. This, by the way, is not meant as a reflection on Dubya, I just can't cotton to suck-ups.

The same issue of timing shot the hell out of my idea of a Halloween piece where I bemoan the loss of the "Trick." I had a howler whipped-up about how the Trick has long since ceased to be a viable option to the be-plagued Trick or Treatee. I was gonna go on about how much money you could save if you simply came to the door and did that trusty gag where you pretend you can make the end of your thumb come off. "Thank you goodnight."

I also had kind of a rueful bit about how Trick or Treating has changed so much since I was a kid in small-town Utah. There was no trunk-or-treat at the church parking lot, and the thought of taking your parents with you was as unthinkable as taking your grandma to the prom. I'm not exactly sure when this change took place - when the fear of kidnapping pedafiles ruined what was once a night of high adventure that was as anticipated as Christmas morning. Back in the days when you'd return home late with a heavy pillow case laden with an amalgam of carmeled apples, sugar cookies and popcorn balls. All homemade fudged-together like Sputnik - dotted with pieces of candy, nuts and pennies. Somewhere along the way, well before Elizabeth Smart, parents were pressed into service as body guards. Pity.

In any case I decided against either of those topics and instead called upon my niece Maddy, who is now back in our midst and hopefully ready to take the pressure off her uncle Bone. No such luck, it seems Maddy had just as hectic a month as myself and declined my offer. Hence with Thanksgiving the most topical Holiday in sight I've decided to run, what I think is the best piece that's ever appeared in this column, originally titled "Is This The Thanksgiving We All Die?" Check this one out, it introduced us to Jack the Mormon and it still kills me. It goes a little something like this:

When your Mother marries a new man not only do you get yourself a new "Daddy," but you also inherit a whole new set of relatives. Which can be for better or worse, usually worse, but isn't generally a problem--except around the Holidays. It seems, Ray my newest stepfather, has an older widowed sister named Iris, whose late husband, rumor has it, died of food-poisoning about a year ago. This little tidbit of info would've, no doubt, met with the same amount of indifference that I extend to all my stepfather's kin, were it not for the fact that we were planning on spending Thanksgiving with Aunt Iris. The culinary culprit - a woman who'd already killed with her kitchen, would be preparing food that I'd be expected to eat a heaping plate of. To quote a line from The Accidental Tourist, "is this the Thanksgiving we all die?"

The details I've managed to gather about her husband's food-related demise came from Boo, my little brother, who talks to my stepfather alot more than I do. According to Boo's version, Iris took the old-boy out with her "sloppy joes." I confronted my mother with the issue, but she just smiled her scared little "come on honey, third husbands don't grow on trees" smile and dismissed the matter as nonsense. I could've easily made a scene and got out of going, "I want to have Thanksgiving with my real Dad," bla bla bla, you know the drill. But the truth is, my real dad is a real jackass and besides, I'll admit I was a bit intrigued--I enjoy a good murder mystery. I figured that unless the old bat is some kind of "Hitchcock nutjob," she can't afford to dish out the "Iris virus" to every dinner guest that comes down the pike. If it's true that she escaped justice in the case of her late husband, it'd look bad to have four more dead relatives lying around the dining room floor. Anyway, curiosity got the best of this kitty, and thus I decided to head on over the river and through the woods to Pahrump, Nevada.

"Most people think that Pahrump was named by the local Paiutes," explained my stepfather as we drove, "but it was actually named after it's most famous resident, 'the Little Drummer Boy' . . . Pahrump ump ump pum." Easy Pops, I'm liable to soil your leather seats back here. Actually I didn't know anything at all about Aunt Iris or Pahrump, and as the trip wore on I became lost in the twisted landscape of my own imagination. Aunty Iris, hmm . . . dozens of cats probably have the run of the place, her wild gray hair flecked with bits of leafs and twigs, crazy eyes watering from poisonous fumes and neglected cat-boxes. Perhaps she equates electricity with evil and lives by candlelight, surrounded by Christian knick-knacks, her tonsils prominently enshrined in a jar, and velvet paintings of Jesus and Elvis all over the walls . . .

We made a right turn at Vegas and headed north across the desert, and as I stared out at the tumble weeds and dust devils dancing across the hellish terrain, I couldn't help but get into that festive Thanksgiving mood. I might have been dozing, but as we grew near our destination I was overcome by a stifling sense of paranoia. There was something on fire in the distance and the heavy smoke cast a coppery haze over the sun. Ominous clouds arose from a smoldering mass that looked and smelled like sheep, perhaps goats and dozens of buzzards were circling above the foul smoke. I rubbed my eyes and blinked, but out among the cactus and sagebrush I'm certain I saw a small boy running for his life from a lizard the size of a beagle. What had I got myself into? . . . Aunty Iris, Aunty Iris, there's no place like home.

I was roused from my trance by my little brother's excited screams, "Maddy look, there's a man with one arm." I rubbernecked in time to see a scroungy-looking old man hitchhiking with the only arm he possessed. A spectre that might not have been so disturbing, had he not been sporting a fresh bandage where his right arm had once been - suggesting that his dismemberment had transpired recently. Pahrump - a study in cactus and trailer houses where a person evidently stands to lose a limb. "Is this the Thanksgiving we all die?" As we were pulling into town my new stepdad decided it would be a fun bit of Thanksgiving trivia to inform us that they have a whorehouse in Pahrump. "No kidding," I remarked, "why don't we swing by and I'll grab an application." Par-hump - you gotta love Nevada. After getting lost for about an hour we finally located Aunt Iris' home and pulled into the driveway of a rickety old house, behind a red Chrysler LeBaron that bore the license plate DVL 666. At which point I suggested that we save ourselves and eat at Denny's. "We passed a Denny's--hello . . . "

Alas, no one was swayed by my logical plea, and as I stepped through the threshold into Iris' antiquated abode, I was at once struck by a Thanksgiving aroma so powerful it stunned me. For some reason I almost cried. "Steady Maddy, put on your game face, you've seen Arsenic and Old Lace enough times to see through this charade." But try as I might to discover any sinister designs this woman might be harboring, she totally charmed me off my feet. Iris had kind of an Earth-Mother "refugee of the 60s," thing about her and her eyes were as sweet and clear as a high school girl. As for cats, she only had one - a fat old tabby named Mama Cass, who also seemed hypnotized by the aroma of a roasting bird. My mother immediately went on a tear about how she'd march right down to the DMV and get that 666 license plate change, if it were her. Iris laughed this off and referred to her old car as the "anti-Chrysler," and said she loves it--nobody messes with her.

Any delusions I had about dying as a result of poison pie vanished when her other dinner guests arrived. Her next door neighbor is an older Paiute man whose infirmities were being attended to by his grandson Jack. Be still my fluttering heart, Jack. Jack is a twenty year old, athletically built Paiute specimen, with shoulder length raven hair, who bore a strong resemblance to a young Marlon Brando. I thought I was going to slide off my chair. As they arrived bearing pies and jars of corn relish, I first suspected Iris of purposely staging this "original Thanksgiving" reenactment for effect; but it soon became obvious that these were her dear friends, and we enjoyed a lively Thanksgiving feast that I'll not soon forget. I'd never actually hung out with Indians before and I suppose I might have suspected them to be a dour lot, silent and brooding - still bitter about getting kicked out of their own country. To my surprise however, Jack and his grandfather were both funny and charming, talkative to a fault and, as previously noted, Jack was a hottie by any standards.

After dinner, as the others dozed around the football game, Jack invited me over to his grandfather's house. Again I was surprised by my emotional response to this humble dwelling, but when Jack showed me into his own room I was gone, fatal, hopeless. Jack's room was far and away the coolest place I'd ever seen. It was wired for "surround sound," he had a giant TV screen and a collection of videos to rival Blockbuster. He let me pick a video and we enjoyed the waning afternoon watching the Holiday classic Pulp Fiction. I asked him about the one armed man, and he told me that the guy lost his arm in a mining accident years ago and nowadays makes a handsome living panhandling in Vegas. The bandages are purely for effect. Though I knew it might be a tad indelicate, I was emboldened to ask about the circumstances surrounding the food-poisoning death of Iris' late husband. The question sent Jack into spasms of laughter. After he recovered his composure, he explained that Iris' husband Walter actually died from blood poisoning due to complications following a golf cart accident. "He went down swinging," Iris has been known to joke, Jack informed me, now a bit sober from the memory. He went on to tell me that his grandfather used to call Iris "Firis" because of her burning spirit, but that now he calls her "Sigh-ris" because of her heavy heart. "She's like a mother to me," Jack mused, "you should get to know her she's a cool lady."

At this point I would've married Jack, bore his children and lived in a Teepee in the snow. I was prepared to dance with wolves and live a nomadic existence hunting wild game and smashing berries into paste. Hell, I would've worked in the whorehouse during the off-season to be with this guy, Jack. I couldn't remember ever being so smitten. It was all I could manage not to make some sort of clumsy pass as we lay side by side watching the resurrection of John Travolta's acting career. Suffice it to say that I was loathe to leave Jack's cosy little technoasis. But like all miracles, reality eventually sets in and, after a lot of hugs and "we'll see you again soons," the clan was back in the Acura and on the road again.

It was a different landscape that I stared out upon as we made our way back to God's country. A full moon painted the desert a magical shade of blue as I mulled over my stardust memories, clutching a piece of paper with a (702) phone number that I'd already memorized. I was sick with it - I felt like a sap, but how could I help myself? Jack even called me "Pilgrim" as a parting Thanksgiving shot. Maybe you had to be there, but with his little John Wayne impression on top, it was dead funny. My big, throbbing heart smiled all the way home. "Pilgrim." I'm tellin' ya, love is nothing if not an unpleasant shock to the system. Thank God we have it.