Turkey Talk

       Thanksgiving is hands down my favorite holiday.  I have wonderful memories of Thanksgivings past and enjoy celebrating old traditions and creating new ones. Yesterday I was listening to talk radio and listeners were calling in sharing their Thanksgiving disasters.  Some were just plain funny while others were a bit awkward.  Every year I can't help but reflect on a Thanksgiving when I was a kid which could probably qualify as a disaster.  The week of Thanksgiving my entire family caught the flu.  One by one we were taken down for the count and the plans for our yearly Thanksgiving dinner with our relatives out of town went down as well.  We began recovering as the big day approached with a faint glimmer of hope that we might not have to cancel our travel plans.  But alas, we were still too weak and tired to travel.   So our Thanksgiving meal was lunch at the luncheon counter at Walgreens in Pine Bluff.  At the time it wasn't what we expected, but looking back, I think it was my favorite Thanksgiving of all.
       This year our family is doing something different.  Although the Egg Bowl (Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State) is always on Thanksgiving weekend or Day, we've not attended together as a family.   So this year we are taking our Thanksgiving celebration to StarkVegas and having our feast at our son Payne's apartment.  For those of you who know me, you know I am a proud Ole Miss grad who married into a Mississippi State family.   Our son is a State grad and is in Grad school & our daughter is a sophomore at State.  So we spend a lot of time in Starkville these days.  We will all bundle up tomorrow night and head to the stadium for Mississippi's biggest grudge match of the year.  On our Thanksgiving late night drive back to Jackson there will either be one happy and three unhappy campers or one unhappy and three happy ones.  I prefer the first option.  But I have to admit that even though I love how Hugh Freeze has reenergized the Rebel program, I wouldn't be crushed if the Dawgs pull off the upset because I know it would make my kids happy to have their team bowl eligible.  I guess sometimes you really can have it all.  Some things are bigger than football...but football is pretty big down here!  Happy Thanksgiving (and Hotty Toddy Rebels)!

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