50 Thanksgivings

This is my 50^th Thanksgiving. A couple of days ago—on 25 November—I turned 50 years old. A milestone, I reckon. But I didn't really feel any differently from what I felt on 24 November or 7 September or 20 June or 12 February. I was sore when I woke rolled out of bed in the morning, but within a few minutes old muscles and joints loosened up, leaving only the little aches and pains that accompany me through my days.

My 50^th was a good one. On the day before, Monday the 24^th, my family and I traveled to South Carolina to spend a couple of nights with my older son and his family. I had a fine time with all, especially my granddaughters. I slept in a little bit, had a great brunch with my younger son at a place in Columbia called Le Peep. I took a nap not long after that. In the evening, I had a steak at a place called Carolina Wings, and then both my sons, my daughter-in-law and I went to see Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond film. (A night out at the movies has become a birthday tradition for me over the past couple of years.)

So, I turned 50 in Blythewood, South Carolina (near Columbia), about an hour's drive from where I was born—Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter. Curious about my birth year, I went to http://www.timeanddate.com/ and discovered that the numbering of the days in 2008 is just the same as it was in 1958. My birthday this year was on Tuesday, and I was born on Tuesday. So, most of the other dates fall on the same days as well—4^th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Easter was different—23 March in 2008, 6 April in 1958 (which I obviously was oblivious of). Memorial Day was different as well; back in the day before it was permanently moved to Monday, it was always on 30 May.

Election Day was the same in 1958—4 November. But it didn't have the overt historical significance of the 2008 election. In 1958, Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the middle of his second term as president. John F. Kennedy won reelection as US Senator from Massachusetts. West Virginian Robert Byrd defeated the incumbent for that state's senate seat and held the position into the next century and millennium. The great state of Alaska—the new state of Alaska—elected its first two senators: Bob Bartlett (Dem.) and Ernest Gruening (Dem.). Closer to home, incumbent Al Gore Sr. won reelection as US Senator from Tennessee.

Interesting. But enough about that.

Something that went unreported here recently: the White Water Band gathered again in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, on 15 November. Instead of trying to remember the old cover tunes we used to do back in the mid 1970s, we worked on original material, songs that I wrote back in the 1980s: "Thunder & Lightning," "Landscapes" (first time attempted by a band), "Jamboree" and "The Jaws of Modern Romance." We worked all afternoon on these and had respectable versions put together before our time together up. We're planning to put together a short set of these originals—10 or 12 songs—and try to perform at a couple of downtown events next summer: 2^nd Fridays in Marshall, North Carolina, and the River Bend Festival (I think) in Cleveland, Tennessee. Everybody was excited about doing this, so I hope we can pull it together.

Well, the smells of Thanksgiving are beginning to waft through the house. In a little while we'll pack up what my wife is cooking and head across the mountain to Madison County, North Carolina, where we'll eat a Thanksgiving lunch with at my mother-in-law's in Marshall and a Thanksgiving supper at my aunt's in Walnut. Sometime later tonight, stupid with food and fun and thanksgiving, we'll zombie back across the mountain and sleep it off.

Happy Thanksgiving to each and all! I'll be enjoying my 50^th, and I hope you'll enjoy yours, whatever number it might be.