{"id":4763,"date":"2009-11-25T16:59:50","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T21:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/example.org\/a-place-called-thanksgiving"},"modified":"2009-11-25T16:59:50","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T21:59:50","slug":"a-place-called-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/a-place-called-thanksgiving.html","title":{"rendered":"A place called Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PapawsHouse\" “These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng”<\/em> (Psalm 42:4 NIV).<\/p>\n

For\u00a0most of\u00a0my life Thanksgiving Day\u00a0has been a\u00a0place to go.\u00a0Until I was a married man\u00a0we\u00a0drove into the Virginia hills to my maternal grandparents home.<\/p>\n

They had a 70 acre farm deep in\u00a0the Appalachians with forested mountains standing like sentinels overlooking their property. They lived in a home built by my grandmother’s father nearly a century ago. The land was farmed by my grandfather, who also drove a school bus on the side. I can still see the barns and sheds\u00a0that sat behind the house with a yellow school bus parked out front.<\/p>\n

The long drive on a dusty, gravel road (A sign used to read: “End of State Maintenance”)\u00a0only added to the anticipation of being at Granny and Papaws house for Thanksgiving. Uncles, aunts, and cousins would be there. Chaotic laughter and scents of cooking wafted from Granny’s kitchen as the women-folk gathered and busied themselves with dinner preparations. The men-folk sat on the front porch discussing politics and sports while watching the kids play. Papaw would punctuate the occasional story with a spit of tobacco juice across the porch railing. The men would respond with raucous laughter and beg him for another tale.<\/p>\n

Remembering that they were supposed to be watching us, one of the men-folk would yell,\u00a0“Stay out of the creek kids!”<\/p>\n

Usually\u00a0too late for me. I invariably fell in while trying to catch a crawdad. Causing my mother to fuss about muddy clothes and my Granny to come to my aid saying, “He’s a boy. Let him play.”<\/p>\n

After I was married, the Thanksgiving tradition switched to another place to go. We started traveling up into the Blue Ridge mountains to my wife’s family home. Going there wasn’t unfamiliar. They had the mountains and curvy, country roads. They had the festive food and the chaotic laughter. They even had a place for me and my boys to\u00a0play and shoot guns and cause the women-folk to fuss about our muddy clothes. My kids even called Robin’s father “Papaw” and so did I.<\/p>\n

This year the place has changed. With the passing of Robin’s dad in 2008 and the birth of our first grandchild in 2009, apparently, I’m the new “Papaw.” So, we’re having Thanksgiving at home. We’re giving our kids and grandson a place to go… our house.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0don’t have a creek to play in or mountain to climb, we probably shouldn’t shoot guns in the city limits, but I bet if we try, we can still get muddy playing in our yard…<\/p>\n

…and give the women-folk something to fuss about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng” (Psalm 42:4 NIV). For\u00a0most of\u00a0my life Thanksgiving Day\u00a0has been a\u00a0place to go.\u00a0Until I was a married man\u00a0we\u00a0drove into the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2061,1,2062],"tags":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-4763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","category-uncategorized","category-weblogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4763"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.garycombs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=4763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}