Not everybody has some place to go on Thanksgiving

Grant McGee

CMI Columnist

Thanksgiving is up ahead.

It’s a good time to get together with family and friends and spread the love, even though we all know spending time with family over the holidays can get weird quickly.

But sometimes there are folks who don’t have any family or friends to hang with.

I spent a Thanksgiving alone, once.

I had taken a new job in a new town.

I was living in a new place with no furniture. I’ll take that back. I had a bean bag chair, some cinderblocks and planks of wood for shelves and a foam pad upon which I slept in a sleeping bag.

There was no fridge, there was no stove. But I had a hot plate, you know, one of those one-burner thingamaboobers you can cook on. Well, I don’t know if I would call it cooking.

I didn’t have a car either.

At work I listened as co-workers talked of their Thanksgiving plans. I started to get a little blue about it all. Then I thought, “Well, I can still have Thanksgiving. And there won’t be any navigating of the family political waters and no mess to help clean up.”

On my way home I stopped at the neighborhood convenience store and picked up some frozen boil-in-bag turkey and gravy, some stuffing-in-a-box, a can of green beans, a can of yams and some butterscotch pudding cups. They didn’t have pumpkin pie so I thought butterscotch pudding cups were close enough.

Thanksgiving Day I fixed up my repast on top of my hot plate and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I retreated to my groovy pad’s enclosed back porch with my battery-operated TV, turned on the big game and fell asleep on my bean bag in the late fall sunshine.

I was thankful to be alive.

What more could someone ask for at Thanksgiving?

Grant McGee is a long-time broadcaster and former truck driver who rides bicycles and likes to talk about his many adventures on the road of life. Contact him at his blog: grantmcgeewrites.com