Happy Thanksgiving 2021

I found this photo of Thanksgiving celebration in Key West dated 1954. The first thing I saw was the turkey, then the ham, and then the lady on the far left with a cocktail glass in her right hand with left arm raised and index finger pointed. The woman next to her copies her pose as if making some secret Key West salute. All of the other mothers have their arms raised holding cocktails as well. I saw the hot plate and the over-sized pots. I remembered the lunch ladies in my grade school cafeteria and the aroma of mystery meat. They are all drinking alcohol. Look at all the booze! Lots of it. This was not a school function. And these are not lunch ladies. 

Of course this is not a school. Look at all of the switches on the wall and all of the light fixtures behind the women. This must be a light store or hardware store. I looked in my shoebox and found phots of two electric stores in Key West in the 1950s. The first is 504 Angela located across from my office. It is now a bar. The lower photo is 215 Duval Street. It later became and still is Shorty's. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all the lunch ladies, drinkers, non-drinkers, recovering drinkers and potential customers! 

Happy Thanksgiving from a Time Not Too Long Ago

I was eight years old in 1955. I watched the Thanksgiving Day Parade and like a lot of boys my age, I watched Hopalong Cassidy and Mighty Mouse. A couple of years earlier my grandmother took me to the Denver Post to get my picture taken. The Post published photos of  little guys like me decked out for the National Western Stock Show. I was wearing my Hopalong Cassidy chaps, vest, hat, and six shooters. I would post that photo but can't because I messed up my office computer and can't do that today. But I would to prove the point that I admired that man in black because he was good and did good. Always.

Readers of my blog may recall and earlier blog in June of this year when I wrote "My generation grew up watching shows like The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and SUPERMAN where the principal characters fought and defeated evil each week... We grew up believing America was great and Americans could do no wrong." Most of the buyers and sellers I have worked with in the past twenty two years are or were people my age. (Now they are getting to be younger.)  I am confident we all shared those same experiences and the same values.

Earlier today I thought about how immature I was at age 14. I was and still am a nerd. I lived my own little life - probably afraid of just about everything. A couple of years later when I got my driver's license I drove downtown to the Center Theater to apply for a job as an usher. I didn't get the job. I remember it was early summer and probably near sundown. As I walked back to my car I stopped at the May D&F to watch people playing Putt Putt golf. (The green rectangle in the plaza.) An older man in a suit came up to me and said "I bet I can beat you!"  I knew very little about homosexuals, but immediately suspected he was one. I got the hell out of there immediately. Older men are not supposed to be involved with teenage boys. It's wrong! I have never told anyone about this experience. That was fifty years ago. People who are undecided or who are very opinionated on the Roy Moore controversy should think back to how they processed events in their lives when they were fourteen years old.

I don't know how or why our country has gotten so divisive, but it has. My Thanksgiving prayer would be to bring us back to our common values where no American would consider electing anyone accused of being a child predator to the United States Senate.

Happy Thanksgiving to all that read my blog. I appreciate it. May God Bless our Country and help us get through all that is going on.