In 1621, the Pilgrims hosted a grand party lasting three days to celebrate their first harvest in the Americas. Written accounts from the attending colonists document the merriment of that First Pilgrim Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Squanto, a well-traveled Native American living with the Wampanoag Tribe, was likely one of the hungry guests, as were other local dignitaries, 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims (some babies were born since the landing). Squanto and the Wampanoag had taught the Pilgrims to catch the eels and grow the corn for the baked eel delicacies and the tasty corn dishes lining the tables that day.

It was a feast. Somewhat different in menu than would be encountered today. Nonetheless a feast and festivity for all in attendance.

Thanksgiving days and harvest festivals continued as the American Colonies grew and changed.

In 1789, General George Washington, the first President of the new United States, declared a nation-wide Thanksgiving celebration to be held November 26. Subsequent Presidents and governors of the participating states continued the practice, designating various fall days to acknowledge with grateful hearts and bowed heads the harvests and bounties of a growing land.

In 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg, struggling in the dark days of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th President of the United States, proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day. President Lincoln wanted to bring a divided country together to recall the common blessings that continue and sustain even in the midst of great loss. His was a new vision of a Day of Thanksgiving to be held each year in fixed fashion on the last Thursday of November.

In 1939, in the midst of the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32^nd President of the United States, sat in the White House trying to think of ways to make things better. A little extra shopping time before Christmas might help the merchants and the country. Looking at the calendar, President Roosevelt saw that November, 1939 had five Thursdays. Why not have Thanksgiving on the next to last Thursday, the fourth Thursday, and make room for a few more shopping days? With due respect to Mr. Lincoln, President Roosevelt declared the fourth Thursday to be Thanksgiving and the start of the Holiday shopping season. The idea caught on. Congress was a little slower to convince; but on December 26, 1941, President Roosevelt signed the bill making the date of Thanksgiving, as a matter of federal law, the fourth Thursday in November.

To the joy of merchants and shoppers throughout the land, Thanksgiving has been the fourth Thursday in November ever since.

As you can see, arriving at Thursday, November 28, 2013 for this year’s Thanksgiving in the United States has taken the country, its people and our leaders thought, time and effort.

As you also know, a feast and celebration is a feast, celebration and Thanksgiving whatever the Day.

A smiling face and full tummy are always cause for thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Grandpa Jim

My hand-held read 37 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius) when I started my walk in the cold and damp of the early morning. A front passed through after midnight with dropping temperatures and pouring rain ushering the brittle leaves from their branches to the wet ground.

Color guards cling to the right and to the left as we early morning sojourners brave the cold and wet.

Where they stand gazing out over the walls of their castles, the ranks of the brightly dressed sentries of fall appear thinning in the assaults of early winter .

Soon, the trail of the Katy, the roadway that passes between the city that has grown up and around the trains that no longer pass that way, will lose it protective covering and be exposed again to the elements.

The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad is gone. In its place, a long surfaced parkway welcomes runners, walkers and bikers who wonder after the trail’s name, “Katy.” Years ago, after the Civil War that divided this nation and killed so many of its young men, cotton was grown to the west of the small town of Houston, Texas. When the farmers and workers loaded the wagons with the white fibers, they’d climb aboard and yell back to their families on the porches of the homesteads: “We’re off to the Katy!” The bounty of the cotton harvest was hauled to the railcars of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas to travel around the country and beyond to the world. Those farmers must have thought that name, Missouri-Kansas-Texas, was just a might too long for friendly Texas talk. So, they shortened the railroad to KT and took those wagons to the rail stop of the “KayTee.” It was there that the town of Katy, Texas was born. Katy is now one of the largest western suburbs of the very large city of Houston, Texas. Things changed, but the name stuck. In fact, folks all over Texas started referring to that railroad as the “Katy.” Even up Dallas way and even after the tracks were pulled and the roadbed converted to a manicured path for the lonely walker I followed this morning, the phantom trail of the old railway is called the Katy.

The birds of winter still line the wires beside that old line. When I stop and lift the camera of my hand-held, the skittish flock lifts and soars away. Perhaps, I think, those birds are off in search of a more suitable perch along of a real railroad heading to the south, where the whistles of the modern engines echo a plaintive call to the years goneby and the times changed.

An early morning walk in the cold allows the mind to wander. I step over a resting leaf and see he, like me, is observing the passing of time along the Katy Trail.

May your steps accompany you in pleasant reverie to your destination,

Grandpa Jim

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

Trees are afire along the Katy trail.

This happens each year. The first frost occurs — it was 29 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) one morning last week. That daybreak the bugs ran shivering for cover, and the potted plants drooped unsmiling waiting for the morning. Those plants knew they’d soon be moved to the garage to wait out the months of cold.

This morning, in the bright first rays of day, the tops of the trees exploded in torches of shimmering color.

Even on the ground, I could hear the talking up there in the branches.

The Saps were leaving.

Sap 1: “I’m out of here.” Sap 2: “Why?” Sap 1: “Don’t be such a sap, the temperature has gone south; if we stick around, we’ll be frozen into horehound cough drops.” Sap 2: “Oh, right, I’m running kinda’ slow this morning.” Sap 1: “Well, you’d better get flowing — these leaves are headin’ for the ground and they’ll take you with ‘em if you don’t start snapping.” Sap 2: “Where are you going?” Sap1: “Me and the family have a real nice place just down there, under the roots of the tree – we’re snowbirds when it comes to cold weather. You ought to come along. A change of scene will do you good.” Sap 2: “Thanks, I think I will.” Sap 1: “Well, start headin’ over there to the main trunk. It will be congested with all the traffic on the way down. We’ll catch up. I’ve got to help the Missus with the packing. You know what they say: ‘It’s the early sap that catches the winter nap.’”

With the Saps leaving, the grounds are already covered with dropped and drying leaves.

While overhead, the bright foliage still clinging to the branches has turned bright reds, yellows and oranges with the exercise and puffing of one last fling in the sun.

It’s not just the leaves, the seed pods are on their way off too. They hang dry and shriveled. Soon, a gust of wind will break them free, and they will fly and scatter their seeds to wait and sprout with the April rains.

Until then, we walk down the tunnel of the Katy,

Past the bare silent sentinels of approaching cold,

The last red roses guarding the gates of winter,

Climb the rough-hewn steps to the soon cave,

Past Francis brooding in thought over his fallen flock,

And Armor, the Armadillo, heading to hibernate in his dug den beneath the root home of the vacationing Saps.

Pull out the warm clothes and put an extra blanket on the bed.

The leaves they are a changin’ and the snows will soon be here to whiten our days.

Grandpa Jim

I discovered pizza in 1964 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. In this old house down the street from the college, the proprietors served round thin flat hot bread with tomato sauce, cheese and Italian sausage. I remember the sausage because it was not sliced from a link like you’d find on sandwiches and other dishes. The sausages on top were irregular hand-pinched hot-crisped dollops that tasted to a Midwestern teenager like heaven from the oven.

I never forgot that taste.

I grew, I traveled and I found other pizzas, but those pizzas did not taste the same. That first sausage pie was the best ever, and I missed it soooo.

As a student in Italy, I found the home of pizza. Well, actually, the origins of the dish go back to Greece where the locals covered their bread (pitta) with oils, herbs and cheese. It wasn’t really pizza yet, but the Romans liked the word pitta and got to thinking. What if you took that dough and pinched it down (pinsere, to press, in Latin) into a flat bread (a pittsa – starting to sound like pizza) and baked that pittsa with oil and cheese on top in an over? Presto, Change-oh!!! Those Italians had invented pizza, and the folks down the coast in Naples did it best. Their Neapolitan flatbread pizza with tomato sauce (red), basil (green) and mozzarella cheese (white) looked so like the Italian flag that Queen Margherita named it her favorite. You can still find that red, green and white Pizza Margherita in just about any good pizza joint in the world.

I looked and I did. I found the Queen’s pizza and many other varieties. I became something of a pizza junkie. But, I never found that first pizza. Where was it? I dreamed at night of that original thin delicious sausage pie that had introduced me to the pizza world. The taste of that pizza pie remained forever locked in my taste buds waiting to be reawakened and released.

Louis Canelakes moved from Waukegan, Illinois to work in the restaurants of Fort Worth and Dallas. By all accounts, Louie was a very likeable fellow who made friends easily. Yesterday’s paper described him as something of a streetwise Greek philosopher who treated princes and paupers alike, could talk with anyone about anything, and made strangers feel like regulars.

After serving in other people’s restaurants, Louie decided to open his own. In 1985, he found what looks like and old gas station on the east side of Dallas, painted it white and put up a small sign with his name.

For the new establishment, Louie wanted something special. He wanted to serve pizza, but not just any pizza. He wanted to serve Waukegan-style pizza with box-cut slices. With his brother, Louie did just that. The restaurant was a success, and the pizza was rated Best in Dallas.

I did not know any of this when I moved to Dallas in 2006. I was just hungry for pizza. One evening a friend suggested we try a place she’d read about in the paper, a hang-out for newspaper reporters, a local joint with a reputation for good food.

Sure, why not?

When we walked through the door, I wondered at the framed hand-drawn caricatures covering the walls. The interior was dark and small. Friendly faces talked at the bar and around at the tables. The tables and chairs were definitely not fancy, mostly old plastic lawn furniture. When we sat down, the smiling waitress propped up a table leg with a folded paper napkin to keep the top from rocking. We ordered pizza, and we waited. Nothing seemed to move fast. I watched other pies delivered on round metal plates. I could see the pizza was definitely a thin crust with an odd cut, in little squares. I noticed no one was leaving any food on their plates. We talked and sipped and waited. From the kitchen, I spied our waitress approaching, a pan over her head. With a flourish, she swung the pizza down to the middle of our table and whisked away.

We looked together.

I carefully extracted a square from the steaming pie and slid the piece onto the small white plate. It was hot. I waited. I lifted the square, blowing on it, opened my mouth and bit into the crust and cheese and sauce and the small mounded morsel of crisped sausage. . . .

I never met Louie. He died Sunday. I know one thing. He makes the best pizza in the world. With that first bite, I found the pizza of my dreams. I’d come home, and I haven’t stopped coming back since.

I think the best people in the world are those who spend their lives making others happy.

Thank you, Louis Canelakes.

Grandpa Jim

In the United States, Thanksgiving Day this year will be officially celebrated on Thursday, November 28, 2013.

Years ago, the Pilgrims reached the coast of the present-day state of Massachusetts. After about 65 days of mostly rough weather at sea, land was sighted on November 9, 1620. Despite the misery they had endured on the long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the passengers stopped and recited together a prayer of thanksgiving to have reached the shores of the Americas.

Of the102 passengers who had joined in that voyage from persecution to freedom, two died enroute and one, the child Oceanus, was born. From their sailing vessel, the Mayflower, 101 colonists disembarked in the cold and wet of November, 1620 to land and step on Plymouth Rock.

By the end of that first winter in March of 1621, only 47 of the Pilgrim band remained alive.

Spring presented little prospect for thanksgiving. Very little food remained. The surviving settlers had seed and drive, but the new arrivals possessed little knowledge of their surroundings and no experience with the planting and raising of the native corn. The Wampanoag did. This was their home. They watched, they waited and they approached. The native peoples helped the newcomers to plant the crops and hunt and gather from the lands of the Massachusetts.

The Wampanoag had little cause for their generosity. The tribe had been decimated by European diseases, and many of their members had been sold into slavery by European traders. Yet, without expectation of return, they extended the strength of their hands, the knowledge in their heads and the kindness of their hearts. This land was their home. They knew its ways, and the natives showed the new ones how to make the land theirs.

A harvest was made, and it was a harvest of plenty.

No one knows the date of that first thanksgiving on the shores of the Americas. I like to think it was on the anniversary of the Pilgrim’s arrival, and unlike the cold and wet day in 1620, this day in November of 1621 was a warm sunny day, a day of Indian summer along the New England coast.

They all gathered: the Pilgrims, the crew who were now colony members and the Wampanoag. Each brought what they could to that first celebration. The bounty was spread on the tables and on blankets across the ground. It was more than enough, much more.

Family, friends and neighbors spent that day together sharing what they had in common, smiling, watching the children run and play, tasting each other’s special dishes, trading stories, exchanging keepsakes, napping in the warmth of the afternoon, waking, stretching, gathering up the empty dishes and full families, waving across to the departing groups, and in their various languages wishing each other well as they returned happily to their homes in the fading light thankful that from the turmoil and trials of the past year there could be such a simple day of Thanksgiving and hoping for another day to spend together the next year.

In this land of the United States, we will spend that day together soon on November 28^th. I think all the lands and all the peoples of this globe have their special days of Thanksgiving. All peoples have suffered, encountered generosity, and been rewarded with good harvests and new friends — perhaps not always bountiful harvests, but always true friends to help us on our ways. Perhaps it is these shared experiences and faithful companions, as much as our good fortunes, that cause us wherever we live and on whatever the date to stop and whisper “Thank you,” gather and hold our own special Day of Thanks.

May the bounty of the land and the warmth of friendship greet you on your Thanksgiving Day,

Grandpa Jim

Wikipedia defines a “kolache” as a “a type of pastry that holds a dollop of fruit rimmed by a fluffy pillow of supple dough.” Well said, but the real thing is so much better than the definition.

My wife’s great grandparents arrived in Central Texas from the Czech Republic around 1890. They came seeking new farmlands and they arrived with old recipes. In the small Czech village of Verovice in the province of Moravia, they had baked kolaches as a special treat for weddings. In the new country, the times were hard and the work long. They needed a treat to brighten the days and encourage their labors between weddings. So, on the weekends, the families would bake kolaches on Saturday and share them with relatives and friends on Sunday. They’d sit together, kolaches in hand, smile, laugh and remember the old with the new. Like any good memory, the kolache caught on, became a part of the expanding communities, was tasted and accepted enthusiastically by the neighbors, and earned a special place in the hearts and on the tables of the citizens of the growing State of Texas.

Except . . . she took the recipe with her!

When my wife’s mother died in September, she left without having written down the family kolache recipe. The seven daughters and four sons were in a dismay. Something must be done. It is generally recognized that one cannot go long in the State of Texas without the bite of a good kolache. Something had to be done and done quickly.

A couple of Saturdays ago, the First Annual Kolache Recipe Recreation and General Family Bakeoff was commenced at an early hour in the Building next to the House at the old family farm.

The newly devised secret recipes were written down and arranged next to the ingredients being mixed.

Uncle Joe and Brother Charles had purchased a new commercial oven and a heavy duty restaurant mixer to assist the efforts of the family throngs rushing into the Building to help and observe.

The first batch was concocted and carefully placed in the electronic mixer.

Removed, the precious dough was hand-kneaded under the close supervision of seasoned veterans.

To rise, the rounded globules rested in assorted pans between the heat of the oven and the warmth of the stove to allow the dough to double and triple in size.

Fillings were patiently prepared from the peaches of Grandma’s old tree next to the house and the ground poppy seeds you see here from the home-grown poppies she had hand harvested herself – all with plenty of butter to go in, on and over everything (butter is the great comfort and sure secret of the friendly family kolache).

The risen dough is pinched into balls that are flattened. Fingers push a depression into the middle of each. Fillings are spooned into the shallow cavities, and the pastry sheets of prepared kolaches are lined on the tables to await their turn . . .

. . . to slide into the oven for the bake and watch and wait.

Extracted burning hot with just a touch of brown, more butter is sladled onto the tops and around the sides to relax the the fruit fillings and glisten the rims of the pillowed dough.

Transferred to cool on paper towels, the tables are massed with baked kolaches by the 100’s!!!! On that one day, the army of relatives baked some 600 kolaches, around 50 dozens with all manners of fillings, toppings, stuffings and cinnamon swirls.

In the midst of that plenty, the great joy is not the many, but the single warm beautiful kolache in hand waiting for the first welcome bite home.

Yes, the consensus was, every kolache from every kolache recipe was the best ever and must be made, tried and eaten again the coming year at the Second Annual Kolache Recipe Recreation and General Family Bakeoff.

Thank you, Mom, Grandma, Great Grandmother — you are the best.

We couldn’t have done it without you.

See you all, next year,

Grandpa Jim