Debbie,
My column.
Jim
.
High Notes 11-27-2014 Thanksgiving
America’s Thanksgiving Day, may be
the greatest holiday for our Democratic society, and in so many ways. Ways that are not religious, but definitely traditional
as to the original meaning of the day when the first Americans began their
annual feasting. They had lots to be
thankful for, and so do we.
Take my own family…the one of Forest and Mary Kegley of 1227 McConnell Avenue, Portsmouth,
Ohio. The Kegley’s are a unique family, if you only
base it on the largeness of the group (ten children), with a myriad of
personalities, occupations, and interests.
In about 1948, I was responsible
for the care, feeding and raising of our family’s Thanksgiving Turkey for a
couple of years. My Dad, brought home a
small group of six gobblers as chicks, and assigned me those duties. He build a large turkey coop in a small
portion of our backyard on McConnell, and those turkeys became my personal
pets. I don’t think I ate the turkey,
just the ham, for a couple of years.
For the past several years the
Kegley’s have gathered in the private, and luxurious, activities building owned
and maintained by the residents of a neighborhood in Beaver Creek, Ohio,
named “Stonehill”. The area is near the
town of Xenia, in Greene County, famous as site of a devastating tornado that
swept through it in 1974 killing 19 people.
It is ironic that Donald Lundy, a 1959 graduate of Portsmouth High School,
was a full-time member of the Ohio National Guard, and a professional
journalist and public information specialist assigned to cover and report on
the Xenia tornado
devastation. Don was married to Sharon
(Kegley), one of the McConnell Avenue Kegleys.
Don, (deceased) and Sharon
lived in Columbus
and had three children; Mickey and Missy (twins) and Daniel. Mickey, a State Farm Insurance agent, is the
resident of Beaver Creek, and he and his wife, Laramie, host of the annual Kegley family
feast. Yes, I know Laramie is an unusual name and one I mix-up
regularly…I want to call her Wyoming,
or Dakota, but she is a fine and pretty wife of a favorite nephew.
Xenia, is a Greek word meaning “hospitality”,
and that is appropriate for the purpose of this column, because hospitality is
what the Thanksgiving holiday is all about.
In the early years, during the
1940’s and 1950’s we gathered at McConnell Avenue, in the basement family room
which my dad, and two older brothers, Forest Jr., (Bud) and Sam, helped dig by
hand, from under our house. I can
remember their grumbling as they had to carry the buckets of dirt to the Dad-made
utility trailer attached to the family Hudson, to be carted away.
My father, Forest, Sr., was an
ambitious and industrious man, who always had a project going, whether it was
the construction of our two story block garage/workshop, or the building of the
hydraulic lift which he made from plans outlined in one of his “Popular
Mechanics” magazines. The lift was made
to help his sister, Lovell Copen, handle and move her wheelchair-bound son,
Billy from chair - to bath - to bed.
After our Dad died, in 1959,
we continued using the basement,
and later, after the group got too big, we rented part of the Scioto County
fair grounds a couple of years, and then we started to rent Boy Scout Camp OYO,
or Girl Scout Camp Molly Lauman, for our large family Thanksgiving gatherings,
because my sister, Sandy worked with the Boy Scouts of America organization in Portsmouth.
Those sites, and Beaver Creek, are
good party-places because they have large play areas for the kids. We
used to have regular pass and touch football games, and we’d play musical
chairs, and watch football in the buildings.
Our Thanksgiving gathering now numbering 45 to 55, is where we
traditionally have a visit from Santa Claus, which is to say, one of the young
fathers of the family dons the red and white, stuffs a pillow, attaches a white
beard, and carries a sack full of pre-labeled gifts for the kids. I had that honor way back in 1968, the year
my 46-year old son was a baby.
Today I wouldn’t have to use the
pillow.
Too much turkey.
