The Walk

 

When I was quite young, eight or nine or so, — it seems odd saying that, doesn't it?  'Nine' as 'quite young'?  but at 70, that's the way you see the world. — my father had a Thanksgiving Day tradition: "Would you like to go for a walk?"  We would trek on foot from our home on 43rd Street to the Mrs. Smith's Bakery Outlet at — I'm guessing here — 2nd Avenue and 6th Street.  That's about two miles each way.  Dad would pick up a mince pie, an apple pie, and a pumpkin pie and then we would walk all the way back home, arriving in time for Thanksgiving Dinner, and I'd be famished.

The purpose of the walk, by the way, was twofold: one, to get the kid out of the house so that Mom could pull dinner together (relatively) undisturbed, and two, to get me ready for dinner.  Worked like a charm.

When my brother, Jerry, started his family, he continued this tradition of taking the children for a Thanksgiving Day walk, and his children (and theirs) have carried on that tradition so that The Walk is now done not by two or three walkers, but by two or three dozen and any thought of possibly skipping it this year is strictly out of the question.

I'm sure my father would be pleased.