Me during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2010 celebrating my birthday. In my house in Marietta, Georgia.
(Courtesy Chet Wallace)
Thanksgiving is spending time with family and being thankful for what you have. That is if one can deal with the relatives that are seen once a year concerning the subject of politics, in which we all have to grit our teeth. A remembrance of the holiday brings back fond memories of turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole and other side items. The desserts are plentiful with thoughts of pumpkin pie and whipped cream.
The Thanksgiving holidays I spent in Louisiana brought back fond memories. I grew up in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana in the small town of Morgan City, which was the biggest city in the parish with about 16,000 people in the 1970s. My birthday falls on November 23, the same week as Thanksgiving, so my birthday is celebrated during the same week as Thanksgiving. My grandmother’s birthday was November 28, so her birthday was celebrated in conjunction with mine. So, sometimes we had a big celebration of Thanksgiving, my birthday, and my grandmothers, all in one sitting.
In the early 1980s I celebrated my birthday during Thanksgiving at my grandparents house in Franklin, Louisiana. Left to right standing are my father Roger Wallace, my mother Mary Wallace, my Uncle Tim, cousin Tammy with her husband Jack behind her and then my aunt Marvel. Sitting is me and my cousin Rachel.
(Courtesy of Chet Wallace)
My grandparents lived in Franklin, about a twenty-minute drive from Morgan City. We met at my grandparents’ house for the celebration. My parents, me, my grandparents Chester and Iris Baudoin and my uncle’s family attended. My aunt Beverly, Iris’ sister, came over also because she didn’t have children and wasn’t married at the time. She lived about three blocks away. Usually, my grandmother had an African American cook to come over and cook the Thanksgiving meal. During my childhood it was a lady named Marguerite.
My grandfather Chester Baudoin in the kitchen where we had so many Thanksgiving meals when I was a kid. Probably taken in the late 1960s before I was born.
(Courtesy of Chet Wallace)
When my parents and I moved to Fort Myers during the summer of 1986, my grandparents started coming to Florida to visit us for Thanksgiving and they came every year until they passed away, my grandmother passing in 1998 and my grandfather in 2003. My grandparents usually drove a two day drive from Louisiana to Florida. The very first time they came to visit, for Thanksgiving of 1987, they stayed at a hotel near the corner of College Parkway and Highway 41. In subsequent years they stayed at what was a Quality Inn just off the Cape Coral bridge in Cape Coral, now a Holiday Inn Express. My grandmother tended to be quirky, so she had to have the same room every time they visited because the bed faced a certain direction. When my grandmother died in 1998, my grandfather decided to stay with us at my parents Fort Myers home near the corner of Winkler Road and Gladiolus in south Fort Myers.
I lived in Orlando, Florida from 1996 to about 2002. During those years, I drove the three-hour trip to Fort Myers to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and my grandparents. When I moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 2002, spending about eighteen years there, I drove to Fort Myers for Thanksgiving. For the 2015 Thanksgiving dinner I spent some time with my cousin Jennifer at her friend’s house in Peachtree City, south of Atlanta. Jennifer was passing through Fort Myers to visit. They stayed at the Lani Kai resort on Fort Myers Beach, which is now in danger of being demolished because of the damage it sustained by Hurricane Ian.
My cousin Jennifer, me and her daughter Gianni. In Peachtree City, Georgia.
(Courtesy of Chet Wallace)
Thanks for learning!
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