By Alan Gauldin
I guess maybe I’m just a child at heart, like everybody else, because we are now approaching my favorite time of the year, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t get up to watch the parade anymore, and I no longer believe in Santa Clause, but this time of the year is more special to me than any other.
It’s hard to probably not want to make it home for Thanksgiving, but I know that all my high school comrades will be in or around. It’s only been a year and a half since I graduated, but anyhow, my whole class plan to get to other things. Some of them are at other colleges, the University of Arkansas in particular, some of them are married, some are in the service, some of them go to college here with me, some have jobs around and still live at home, but it’s for sure that what we had only a couple of years ago is now gone forever.
When I was a kid, we’d all get out of school for a week during Thanksgiving. Since my older brothers, Mike and Steve, didn’t work all very much, I and “Little Gary,” the youngest, didn’t work at all, we’d spend a lot of the week venturing out into the woods behind our house on the oil well on Robener Road in our own sort of a gang. Most of our adventures in the morning and report back to the house only to eat and maybe watch a little afternoon TV. After a full day of hiding out and tramping through acres of forest we’d drag a pot and try to fry some chicken to get us out with Mom and Pop, and maybe watch a movie while Mike went out. As kids, we didn’t have a care in the world, but we didn’t know it.
On Thanksgiving Day, we’d go to my grandma’s house where all the relatives were going, or they’d all come to our house and we’d kind of meet and fool about all day. I guess this probably has some sentimental, but I really miss those days.
Now Mike is married, and he and his wife live in Fayetteville now. Steve is in his fourth year at Denton. I have a not-skeeter school that leaves me little free time, and “Little Gary” is 17 years old, six feet tall and has these grey morning. He works and goes to high school, and all in all, there isn’t much thought given to how things used to be. The woods are still there, but the four young hoodlums that used to explore every tree, creek, and turtle-linn have now gone away, and grown too old for that “kid’s stuff.”