literarysullivan

  Thursday,  November 26, 2015 Although he has been dead now for fifty years, Thanksgiving will always been my Grandpa’s day. More than Christmas or Easter, my grandfather seemed to relish this day most, partly I think because it was the day when the once vast extended family made its rounds from around the state, stopping in at our old house in  Clifton  to celebrate, not merely the foundation of our nation, but our arrival in this part of the planet. That side of the family began to arrive in the United States just after the conclusion of the American Civil War, though the patriarch of the family – a soldier of fortune – apparently came here early to earn his keep in the war, and went back to take part of the Italian revolution, returning finally with the eldest of his kids to start a new family here with a new wife. My grandfather’s father was born in  Italy , but by the turn of the century had already started his own family, producing four songs and two daug...

   November 13, 2018 Thanksgiving looms over us again; though this is year of troublesome anniversaries, a year in which numerous significant events of my past are celebrating a half century – a passage have largely ignored over the year yet can no longer escape since Thanksgiving 1968 was an event I cannot easily forget. Prior to that year, I had previously watched the Thanksgiving Day parade take place via TV, always wishing to attend since like most Americans growing up in post-World War II, I had been indoctrinated in the mythos of that holiday and how it always began the inevitable march towards Christmas. Hank and I had discussed the holiday and its parade a year earlier when both of us got stuck working at the Fabian Theater as ushers on Thanksgiving 1967. While I did not consider it more than idyll talk at the time when we both needed to relieve the boredom of a night when nearly nobody went to the movies except the loneliest of the lonely or the most down and out to k...

    My uncles hated Hank from the moment he appeared at the front door, an aberration from some ghostly world beyond their limited imagination. Gasoline and a struck match made a better mix than they did with him. Born and raised in the desperate times of The Great Depression and World War II, my uncles perpetually saw themselves under siege, if not always by the threat of poverty, then by unsubstantial enemies such as the communists or the blacks. M-1 World War II vintage carbines lined the attic wall for that time when the race riots started, and they would take up position in every window to fight back against the hordes the way patriots had the British back in that time when the hill upon which our house rested served as high ground for Washington’s troops. Yet as prepared as they were for any invasion, Hank, with his shoulder length hair, scraggly beard, purple Nehru shirt and worn bell bottom jeans was like an invasion from Mars against which my uncles had absolutely no ...