(Thanksgiving) Reunions Call for Preparation

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
Of the editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
November 21, 1959


   IT'S BEEN a year since we've had the whole tribe under the roof, but, barring blizzard or illness, our kids and their spouses and kids will be with us this Thanksgiving. Anticipation is so high that if anything happens to spoil the plan we'll send back the turkey and cry in our cornmeal mush.
   I'm thinking of kidnapping some one's little daughter for the day to give the gentle sex better representation. We now number 13, with only three females, all adults. Our six grandchildren are all boys. I'd given up hope that either my daughter or daughter-in-law will ever mother anything but sons.
   Any chance of a granddaughter is 10 to 15 years away. My youngest son is that far from marriage, I trust. And if he should sire a daughter it may be a little late, with only Memorial day rites reminding her of grandpa. The clock is running out on me.

   WE FIND grandsons quite exciting, though. We fatigue visitors with snapshots of them, parrot their cute sayings pridefully and know they all are gifted beyond their years.
   We've instituted a series of family councils preparatory to their coming so the soirée will not be marred by broken legs or cracked skulls. The safety factor calls for particular attention because of 10-year-old Uncle Tom, who is regarded by his nephews as the epitome of masculine perfection. His every move must be copied. His every word is a howl.
   He does have a way, though, of leaving basement doors open and otherwise unwittingly setting booby traps for his juniors. However, we've lectured him sternly on the importance of caution when the little ones are here and I'm confident he'll be at least as safe as a color-blind deer hunter.
   "We simply must get everything out of reach," I admonished. "We'll have crawlers as well as runners and fallers. There must be no marbles, jacks or crayons on the floor, no cigarette butts where they can be eaten, no vases on the coffee table, no knives within reach in the kitchen, no parakeets flitting around. Nobody must be allowed to pull the cuckoo clock off the wall, knock over lamps, throw blocks at the TV or fall downstairs."
   "And remember," my wife put in with a stern look at her son, "if anybody gets hurt we'll be to blame. We want to have a happy time and will--if we're all careful."
   "Also," Uncle Tom grinned, deeming it time to get in a word, "we don't want anyone getting chickenpox." He had recently been afflicted and was talking to his mother, who'd never had the disease.
   "Don't worry about my getting chickenpox," she laughed. "People my age are immune."

   SHE DISCOVERED next day she was wrong. People her age do get it occasionally, a nurse told her, and in such cases the malady is invariably severe. This cheerful soul even remarked that an 80-year-old woman she knew recently had succumbed to measles, "so you never can tell."
   Now we're worried. Chickenpox, they say, comes about two weeks after exposure. If milady gets it--and if our luck runs true she will--she'll break out in a few days and the holiday festival will be shot.
   If this happens I won't even eat mush come Thanksgiving. I'll drown myself in the stuff.

                                                                    Mike Guthrie

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