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eerieindianaI don’t have many great memories of Thanksgiving. I don’t suppose many people do. Most people though probably have a million great memories of Christmas and Halloween, but Thanksgiving seems more like a family obligation more than anything else. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t spent a Thanksgiving with my family in almost three decades.
At its heart, Thanksgiving is a meal. Ask anyone about Thanksgiving and more often than not what you’ll get back is a recitation of food items.
I never really thought about it.
But…
…the more I think on it, the more I realize while I may not have great memories of the holiday I do have a lot of memories that involve Thanksgiving.
While Thanksgiving is no Christmas, hell it’s not even a close second if you think about it, there is something truly special about it. One truly good memory of the holiday that I hold is going to my former roommates’ home on that fourth Thursday in November. There were four of us in attendance. My friend Loni picked me up and we drove out to Jim and Jackie’s house out in Rio Rancho. I had lived there formerly. Loni had been doing his pharmacy internship that year and so he had been stuck in town. Jim and Jackie were not going back to Chicago that year for some reason. And my family was in RI.
It was a wonderful day. I remember The Charlie Brown Christmas album playing on repeat almost the entire day. To this day, out of some nostalgia I guess, on Thanksgiving I always play the Charlie Brown Christmas album.
We had dinner in the late afternoon, probably around three or four. There was turkey, of course, and stuffing (I think that was the first time I ever actually liked stuffing) and all the usual suspects that appear at the meal. I can’t tell you what was said or what we did. I think we watched Beauty and the Beast, the original cartoon, later that evening. We may have had some wine, though I’m not entirely sure on that. I think that might have been before drinking became a necessity as opposed to a lark as it had been.
I know it wasn’t the same year, but on one of those Thanksgiving’s back in the day Jim and Jackie gave me their old color TV set. All I had back then was a 13” black and white TV and I barely got three channels on it. I remember returning to my one room studio apartment and putting the TV on my footlocker where the tiny black and white TV had formerly resided. The Kids in the Hall were on channel 13. I watched one episode and, if I remember correctly, they showed another one right after and maybe another one after that. God, that just about made my day.
Another Thanksgiving, probably only a year or two after that, I spent on my own. I remember thinking that this was some sort of right of passage: being able to spend a holiday alone. I think I was working at the Hotel from Hell and I got my Thanksgiving dinner at the hotel cafeteria. It wasn’t so bad. I still have an affection for Turkey-Ala-King to this day, and have it once in a while out of a can if I find it. The rest of that day I spent sitting in a chair in the corner of my room, by my single window, and I read Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon.
The building was so silent. Probably most of the other residents were off visiting relatives. At one point, I left my room and walked the halls. It felt very much like The Shining, though I didn’t have a Big Wheel or see two strange twins lurking about. I think this was in a vain search to find someone else, someone to talk to maybe. I have always entertained the idea of finding my true love in some serendipitous event along the lines of: she locks herself out of her room and I happen along…
Me: Of course, you can use my phone…
Her: And they say there’s no nice guys left…
Me: Will you marry me…
Her: Of course!
But all I found was an empty building.
Yet another year, over the Thanksgiving weekend my friend decided to introduce me to his new girlfriend (she would later be his wife). I had a panic attack of so severe that by the time they arrived, I was freaking out so terribly, I was not able to recognize where I was despite the fact that I was in my own apartment. I couldn’t recognize the two people with me despite the fact that I knew who they were. My heart beat so fast I thought it was going to burst forth from my chest like the alien in, well, Alien. I know, great first impression right…
I woke up hours later, my stereo tuned to the classical music channel. They were gone. That was the first time I’d ever experienced a panic attack. Unfortunately, it would not be the last. The next day was Sunday and I had to go into work (still at the Hotel from Hell) and hook up microphones or something. I felt like I was going to keel over and every once in a while my heart sped up, but I got the work done and left as quickly as possible. I spent the rest of the day in bed, listening to classical music and trying very hard to keep still.
Still another Thanksgiving I tried to pick up work at my second job, dishwashing at the university cafeteria. There was a girl there I liked, and (yeah it probably sounds stalkerish) I knew she had to work the shift the night before the break and she was leaving for Colorado that night. I asked my boss before I left that day if he might need me that night, and he said probably not but to check later on just in case anything came up. I got out of my night job (still Hotel from Hell at the time) and when I got home I called the cafeteria.
“Nope,” the manager said. “It’s gonna be light tonight. We don’t need you.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling a little dejected.
The little fantasy I’d carried for so long, the one where at the end of the shift, this girl would turn to me and say, “Hey, you want to get a drink or something?”
And I would say, sure, and we would go have a beer and talk and the lighting would be just right and I would be funny.
She would ask me what I’d be doing over the holiday and I would say that I’d just be staying home. She would say that’s so sad, while putting a consoling hand on my arm. We’d have a couple more beers. At the end of the evening, I’d walk her to her car. In the harsh street lamps, just before she got into her car, she’d say, “You know when I get back we should hang out.”
“Sure,” I’d say, and I would hand her a slip of paper with my hastily scribbled phone number written on it. “Give me a call when you get back in town.” And she would give me a look, that said she would be calling me when she got back into town. She would smile and get into her car and drive away.
Of course, it never happened.
Later that night, at least I think it may have been the same night, it might have been on another Thanksgiving eve, as I had prepared to spend the evening alone, there was a knock on the door. Several friends of mine showed up and they were going to a club. I have never been one to pass up a night on the town, at least back then I wasn’t, and we ventured out to a new club that had recently opened up—or it opened up that night, I can’t really remember. What I remember that night was loud music, too much beer, and running into a girl from work (still Hotel from Hell). My friends were very impressed with the girl from work as they all thought she was very attractive. I think they wanted me to get her to hang around with us so they could all get a chance to talk to her, but she was with her friends or her boyfriend. Again, I can’t remember. The next morning, I ran into her at work—the Hotel from Hell was of course open—and we were both hungover and we gave each other that short lift of the head that the other understands as: I see you, this is as much of a greeting as you’re getting out of me.
On other Thanksgiving Eves, I remember drinking with fellow denizens from the Hotel from Hell, and I always remember thinking on those nights that maybe I might meet someone or that a woman from work might take pity on me and spend the holiday weekend with me, drinking and watching movies. It never happened. Not once.
One time, several employees from the Hotel from Hell, decided to go to a downtown bar. We’d started out the night at Bennigan’s (remember those?) and then decided to try our luck downtown. As I was standing around the bar, a young woman came up to me and said my name. It took me a second before I recognized her. She had worked at the Hotel from Hell that summer before she went back to school in, I think it was, Colorado. We went through the usual catching up bull that people who haven’t seen each other in a while do. Then she said, out of the blue, “You know you were right?”
Now I am usually right about a lot of things, but I had to ask her what exactly I was right about this time.
“Moving in together,” she said. “You were right.”
That summer she worked at the Hotel from Hell, I used to run into her at Bennigan’s where everyone used to go after work or in the cafeteria. One night, I was in the cafeteria, drinking coffee or sitting around I don’t remember, and she came in and sat down. We had something passing a relationship where we talked to one another when we saw each other. Somehow, we got on the topic of relationships, of which at that point I had the wreckage of more than a few in my rearview mirror, and she told me that she and her boyfriend were going to be moving in together at the beginning of the next school year.
“Don’t do it,” I’d said, like a prick. I must have been drunk.
She looked at me incredulously. By then I’d had a number of friends who’d moved in with their significant other and not many of them were still together.
“Why?” she asked.
“It ruins the relationship if you’re not ready for what living together does to people,” I said. “You might want to wait until you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” she said too quickly.
“Okay,” I said.
And there she was, only a few months later, telling me I’d been right. Not that I relished that information in the least.
I think of her from time to time. I wish I could see her again. I wish I’d bought her a drink and talked to her for the rest of that night. But I didn’t. I think she was with some friends and that they left soon after I saw her. But I still think of her from time to time and wonder what might have been. Of course, I do.
Another time, when I was working for a catering outfit at the University of New Mexico. Around Thanksgiving time, they used to give any employee who wanted one a frozen turkey. And this wasn’t some tiny little ten-pound bird, this was like a twenty-five pound bird. Probably I would have done better with the ten-pound. If I’d have known what I was getting into I probably would have left it alone, but I got a bug up my ass about getting a free turkey. So, I asked my boss and he said sure, I could have one. The thing was bigger than a newborn! And I had no car back then. I was on a bike. But I took the bird. I rode all the way home, two-plus miles all down-hill with that gigantic bird clutched to my chest with one arm while I navigated the bike with my other arm. I made it home, but I’m sure I made the day of more than a few commuters who must have had a good laugh at what was probably an accident waiting to happen. Luckily, though, I didn’t lose it. I ended up giving the bird to a friend of mine who could use it, but until then it took up most of my freezer space.
Still another time, this was when I actually had a girlfriend during the holiday, I still spent the holiday alone. The night before we’d gone out drinking, as I had most nights before the holiday—I think there was even a holiday weekend where I drove around looking for an open bar; there was nothing open and I drove around a town that looked like The Rapture had just happened. But I was alone not because my girlfriend didn’t want me around, although she may not have, but more because I feel odd in other people’s homes celebrating a holiday that is for the family. I stayed home and made a meal for myself. She came over later and we went to see Harry Potter, the first one, that had just come out. We spent the night together, but there was still something off. I don’t mean to say there was something wrong with her, because there wasn’t. It was me: My own inability to accept what kindness another human being can extend me without wondering if it’s a trick or, if maybe, there was something else out there
One memory I don’t believe I even know how to qualify as good or bad was the time a friend of mine said she wanted to go to Tulsa to visit her family for Thanksgiving. We were sitting in the campus pizza place—it was called Itsa Pizza, and I was the janitor—when Tish brought up the subject of going to Tulsa. Back then I had a VW Bug, a powder blue one, and it worked some of the time. She said she wanted to go to Tulsa and I said Why not. I was probably more adventurous back then. I’m not so much now. I remember her saying that she said she’d pay for the gas and the snacks and that all I’d have to do is drive. Part time. She’d do half duty.
I don’t think I ever really gave it that much thought. The conversation probably went something like this.
Tish: I’d really like to go to Tulsa for Thanksgiving. I just don’t have a car.
Me: I have a car
Tish: Really? Would you want to go?
Me: Sure, I guess.
I think this conversation, if it ever happened,was within a week or two of Thanksgiving. And so, the Wednesday just before Thanksgiving we left at ten that morning for Tulsa. My friend Loni, same guy from the beginning of this, saw us off. We took off from the parking lot of Hokona Hall. Little did I know I was skipping a test in my Calculus class, but I wouldn’t realize that until I got back.
The trip out was pretty uneventful, except for one heart-stopping moment when the bug wouldn’t start. It turned out that when I had the car checked over before we left they hadn’t bothered to look at the battery, which in those old bugs was underneath the back seat. But the guy at the gas station got us some water and helped us push it down the hill to give it a start. And it worked! I remember Tish saying, “Let’s not stop again until we get there.”
“Okay,” I said.
I remember reading Thomas Harris’ Red Dragonat the time and feeling the beginnings of my discomfort already settling in, that I shouldn’t have gone on this trip: That I wasn’t going to know anyone and that I was going to feel like an idiot and that they were going to make fun of me for being so foolish. About halfway there, give or take, I started wondering if I should just ask Tish to drop me off at a hotel and to pick me up on the way back.
I remember we stopped for barbecue at a little place in Groom, Texas. When I read Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, that is the place that I usually imagine when the family stops at Red Sammy’s barbecue.
I had quit smoking at that time, but Tish was still going at it. If I remember correctly, she was smoking Virginia Slims—these tiny toothpick cigarettes that I’m not even sure had any tobacco. Probably by the time we’d reached Oklahoma City, I was bumming them off her.
We were passing through Oklahoma City, me smoking one of her toothpick cigarettes, and we caught a radio station. The lights off the highway, in my memory are as bright as stars. And Guns-n-Roses version of “Live and Let Die” was playing on the radio. Tish didn’t like it. Or she said that something wasn’t right about it. Like the music was okay and so was the singing, but there was something missing. It’s almost thirty years later and I still don’t know what she was talking about, but when I hear that song I almost always change the station. As we passed out of Oklahoma City we lost the radio again and we travelled the rest of the way in silence.
I never did ask her to drop me off, though, I wasnervous about meeting her family even though there was no reason to be nervous. I wasn’t her boyfriend or anything. I was just some guy she knew who had a car. Nothing more than that.
All my worrying turned out for nothing. We got into Tulsa at about ten or eleven that night. It might have been earlier or later. I don’t know. We slept on the couches in the living room. I don’t think I saw more of the house than that. If it was a house. I think it might have been one of those non-mobile, mobile homes.
Thanksgiving Day was great! Her aunt, that’s who we were staying with by the way, worked in the kitchen while we watched movies with Tish’s uncle and cousins. We watched this Australian movie that I think was called The Silent Earth, though I couldn’t tell you much about it if you put a gun to my head. We also watched Madonna’ Truth or Dare which I only remember for the scene where she snubs Kevin Costner; oh, and the whole bottle thing. For the four days we were there, I think one of those movies was always on.
We ate in the early evening. The usual things. I don’t really remember. It was after supper that the fun really began. Sitting around the table, we started doing shots. Her aunt, I wish I remembered her name, took a liking to me and started calling me Stan because “You look like a Stan,” she said.
I remember it, what I remember of it, as that scene from Jawswhere Brody, Quint, and Hooper are sitting around the table toasting one another. I remember a lot of jokes and stories and laughter and drinks. I couldn’t tell you the name of a person there, other than Tish and myself, or anything that was said. But I remember feeling okay. I remember realizing that these people, even though they hardly knew me, liked me and thought I was a good person.
The rest of the trip went by too fast. Her cousin took us out to a pool hall that was so smoky you couldn’t see from one end to the other. We went to a flea market where I found Steve Martin’s A Wild and Crazy Guy on vinyl.
The last night we were there, both of us were on our sleeping couches watching The Night of the Living Dead remake. I hadn’t expected much of it, but was surprised by how good it turned out to be. As a friend of mine likes to say, it’s better than it has any right to be.
Tish said to me, “My aunt wants me to come back for Spring Break.”
“Cool,” I said.
“I’d like you to come too,” she said.
“That would be cool.”
I didn’t know if that meant anything. More than likely it was just a friendly invitation to come and hang out. It didn’t happen though.
We watched the rest of the movie.
We left on Sunday after a side trip to a friend of hers who she said had her copy of the movie Rock and Rule. It turned out that he didn’t remember where he had left it. We watched “The Simpsons” which at the time was maybe three years old and then we left Tulsa just as they were issuing Hurricane or Tornado warning, whichever it was.
The return trip was a mess. I don’t know if you know this, but VW Bugs do not have heaters. At least mine didn’t. And if it did, well, I didn’t know how to work it. The weather going out had been unseasonably warm and we had been comfortable. The weather coming back was like we’d just wandered into a Russian novel. The car had no heat, as I said. Our coats were light to say the least. We certainly didn’t have any gloves or scarves. At one point I found an ace bandage and we took turns wrapping them around our hands to keep warm. While one of us drove, the other slept if just to keep their mind off how miserable the situation was.
When we reached Amarillo, at least I think it was Amarillo, we were practically two popsicles in a VW Bug. We stopped for gas, which was all we could afford, and the people who ran the station took pity on us and gave us tall cups of coffee and these thick packing blankets. For the remainder of the drive, we were wrapped comfortably up in those blankets. I never forgot that kindness of those people even though I might not remember them. Those blankets stayed in my car until the car finally died a few years later and I abandoned it along the side of the road. I kept them there as though one day I was going to drive out to Amarillo and find that gas station and return those blankets. But I never did though.
When we got to New Mexico, I thought we were home free. It was probably only a few hours and then we’d be back in the city and then everything would be fine. That was when the snow started. A lot of people don’t believe it snows in New Mexico. I myself wasn’t aware of it until I moved here. One time my flight was stuck on the runway in Albuquerque because of snow and my mother wouldn’t believe it.
The closer we got to town, the worse the snow got until finally we were being told to get off the road. I think we got off in Clines Corners or someplace not too far from that. The air was clouded with snow and the orange lights gave the road a weird cast like we were in a David Lynch film and something strange was about to happen. We stopped at the first hotel we saw with the vacancy light on. We got a room for the night with my Discover card that I had brought along for emergencies. Tish slept on one side of the bed and I on the other. I think we slept in our clothes. The room was warm and quiet and I remember looking to the windows covered by curtains but a line of light from outside glowed in the space. I just stared at it and stared at it, until I was asleep.
The next morning, we got a wake-up call. I don’t remember the time, but I don’t think I really got what I paid for. We stopped for gas, at least I think we stopped for gas, and the attendant told us that the road to Albuquerque was ice and that travel was discouraged.
I asked Tish what she wanted to do. She said it was up to me. I didn’t like my chances. The snow was still coming down and if the roads were icy it could mean all sorts of bad things to a couple of kids in a VW Bug. I said I could put us up in another hotel room and we could make a try the next day.
She said okay.
We found a more reasonably priced Motel-6 down the way. I think I checked in alone to cut the price and she snuck in. We spent the day not doing much of anything. The TV had only three channels and not much was on. They had a free movie channel and this Winona Ryder movie Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael was on. We watched it three times. There wasn’t anything else to do.
At night, we watched the show Eerie, Indiana. I even remember the episode. It was the one about Daylight Savings and the kid doesn’t set his watch back and so he ends up out of time. Tish didn’t like it. I don’t know why I still remember it.
We went to bed. One on one side. One on the other. In our clothes. I think I was up for a while, just thinking about things. Eventually, I fell asleep.
The next morning, we were all clear for Albuquerque. The motel attendant said as much. I was driving. I started the car and when I put it into gear it made a noise. I backed out of the spot. When I put it into first the stick felt strange, like it wasn’t connected to anything. But it drove.
We stopped for gas and that was when the trip ended. We had filled the car with gas. The car started. The station was in bit of a crater. You had to get over a hump to get back on the road. Well, the bug couldn’t do it. It moved up and then rolled back. We ended up pushing it back to the station.
Immediately, I went into panic mode. Already, I had visions of us walking the rest of the way home. I had another insane idea that we were going to be stuck there forever and that we were going to have to find jobs. Tish didn’t have any better ideas and I still have a memory of her saying that we shouldn’t have stopped.
Since I had no ideas, I called the only people I knew: my roommates. I couldn’t imagine them coming out there to get us and I was right about that. They had no ideas either.
I felt awful. Not the usual kind of awful, either. This was a kind of awful that I’ve only experienced one other time in my life: That feeling where you don’t know what to do and that no one can or is going to help you; that the only option at that moment is to just walk away. But I couldn’t do that because Tish was there.
Finally, Tish grabbed the payphone and called someone. She talked for a bit and then handed me the phone. The man on the other end asked me where we were and what kind of vehicle I had and where we needed to go and the phone number of the pay phone. I would later learn that the man on the other end was her dad. But I just answered the questions. He said he’d call back in a bit.
Now, today, you could probably get yourself out of this fix with a smart phone and a credit card. But back then we only had one of those and no idea who or what to ask for help. When Tish’s dad called back, he said he’d arranged for a wrecker to come and tow us into Albuquerque. He wouldn’t be charging us directly, it would be put on the bill of the mechanic he towed us to. While that was a relief, it was still going to be expensive. I thanked Tish’s dad for the help and we waited.
It was an hour or so before the wrecker showed up. The guy had to drive out from Albuquerque to come get us, so I was getting charged for the ride out and the ride back. By that time, I didn’t care. When you’re drowning you don’t really care who pulls you out of the water, or that they’re charging you.
The tow-truck guy was nice. I thought we were going to have to sit in the VW all the way back to Albuquerque, but we sat up in the heated cab, defrosting, as he hooked up the bug to the truck. I think the man had a beard. At least he does in my memory. When we got on the highway, he offered us his thermos of coffee and gave us cigarettes. I remember he smoked Winstons.
The entire ride back, I didn’t say much. I looked out the window and watched the scenery pass by. We got into town about an hour or so later. We dropped off the car at the mechanic and the tow-guy even dropped us off at the university.
I said bye to Tish on the stairwell out of Itsa Pizza, watching her go off to work at La Posada, the school cafeteria, in her red uniform shirt. The next day I went to the barber and cut off my hair.
The next semester I dropped out of the university. I took a job as a dishwasher and later moved my way up to prep-cook. I wrote at night. I didn’t see much of anyone, not even my roommates, let alone Tish. I ran into her once and she gave me thirty or forty dollars for the hotel rooms, but other than that I didn’t talk too much or hang out with anyone.
The next time I saw Tish was at an outdoor dance held in front of the La Posada dining hall. I had driven into town for no reason I can rightly remember and as I was walking along I heard someone yell my name and there she was. She wore a black cocktail dress and was dancing atop this hill like a maniac. I went over and she hugged me.
I don’t remember much else of that night. Maybe we were drinking, but I don’t think so. I was only twenty and couldn’t get in anywhere. But I remember that Tish was happy to see me. That if I was at fault for what happened, as I had felt for that last part of the trip and for a long time after that, that I had made a mess of things, then I had been forgiven too.
Tish is gone now; she has been for a long time. I am amazed at, when I speak of the dead, that I say they are gone. The older I get, the more often I seem to use that expression. I prefer that rather than saying someone “passed on”. I guess that’s a choice everyone makes eventually.
As they years progressed, I thought of the holidays as something to get through, most often drunk. Over the past decade or so, I usually refrain from others and I find that the drinking is often harder to do than it used to be. I certainly do not take trips—that’s not just holidays. I got real gun-shy after that. Afraid of car problems. Afraid of anything and everything that could go wrong. Now, I stay home. I make something to eat. Sometimes it’s a whole Thanksgiving feast. Last year, I made a green-chili cheese burger and fries. I find that as long as I am in a warm place, with music, and my cats, with a comfortable chair piled with warm blankets, then I can relax and be at peace with my memories.
At its heart, Thanksgiving is a meal. Ask anyone about Thanksgiving and more often than not what you’ll get back is a recitation of food items.
I never really thought about it.
But…
…the more I think on it, the more I realize while I may not have great memories of the holiday I do have a lot of memories that involve Thanksgiving.
While Thanksgiving is no Christmas, hell it’s not even a close second if you think about it, there is something truly special about it. One truly good memory of the holiday that I hold is going to my former roommates’ home on that fourth Thursday in November. There were four of us in attendance. My friend Loni picked me up and we drove out to Jim and Jackie’s house out in Rio Rancho. I had lived there formerly. Loni had been doing his pharmacy internship that year and so he had been stuck in town. Jim and Jackie were not going back to Chicago that year for some reason. And my family was in RI.
It was a wonderful day. I remember The Charlie Brown Christmas album playing on repeat almost the entire day. To this day, out of some nostalgia I guess, on Thanksgiving I always play the Charlie Brown Christmas album.
We had dinner in the late afternoon, probably around three or four. There was turkey, of course, and stuffing (I think that was the first time I ever actually liked stuffing) and all the usual suspects that appear at the meal. I can’t tell you what was said or what we did. I think we watched Beauty and the Beast, the original cartoon, later that evening. We may have had some wine, though I’m not entirely sure on that. I think that might have been before drinking became a necessity as opposed to a lark as it had been.
I know it wasn’t the same year, but on one of those Thanksgiving’s back in the day Jim and Jackie gave me their old color TV set. All I had back then was a 13” black and white TV and I barely got three channels on it. I remember returning to my one room studio apartment and putting the TV on my footlocker where the tiny black and white TV had formerly resided. The Kids in the Hall were on channel 13. I watched one episode and, if I remember correctly, they showed another one right after and maybe another one after that. God, that just about made my day.
Another Thanksgiving, probably only a year or two after that, I spent on my own. I remember thinking that this was some sort of right of passage: being able to spend a holiday alone. I think I was working at the Hotel from Hell and I got my Thanksgiving dinner at the hotel cafeteria. It wasn’t so bad. I still have an affection for Turkey-Ala-King to this day, and have it once in a while out of a can if I find it. The rest of that day I spent sitting in a chair in the corner of my room, by my single window, and I read Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon.
The building was so silent. Probably most of the other residents were off visiting relatives. At one point, I left my room and walked the halls. It felt very much like The Shining, though I didn’t have a Big Wheel or see two strange twins lurking about. I think this was in a vain search to find someone else, someone to talk to maybe. I have always entertained the idea of finding my true love in some serendipitous event along the lines of: she locks herself out of her room and I happen along…
Me: Of course, you can use my phone…
Her: And they say there’s no nice guys left…
Me: Will you marry me…
Her: Of course!
But all I found was an empty building.
Yet another year, over the Thanksgiving weekend my friend decided to introduce me to his new girlfriend (she would later be his wife). I had a panic attack of so severe that by the time they arrived, I was freaking out so terribly, I was not able to recognize where I was despite the fact that I was in my own apartment. I couldn’t recognize the two people with me despite the fact that I knew who they were. My heart beat so fast I thought it was going to burst forth from my chest like the alien in, well, Alien. I know, great first impression right…
I woke up hours later, my stereo tuned to the classical music channel. They were gone. That was the first time I’d ever experienced a panic attack. Unfortunately, it would not be the last. The next day was Sunday and I had to go into work (still at the Hotel from Hell) and hook up microphones or something. I felt like I was going to keel over and every once in a while my heart sped up, but I got the work done and left as quickly as possible. I spent the rest of the day in bed, listening to classical music and trying very hard to keep still.
Still another Thanksgiving I tried to pick up work at my second job, dishwashing at the university cafeteria. There was a girl there I liked, and (yeah it probably sounds stalkerish) I knew she had to work the shift the night before the break and she was leaving for Colorado that night. I asked my boss before I left that day if he might need me that night, and he said probably not but to check later on just in case anything came up. I got out of my night job (still Hotel from Hell at the time) and when I got home I called the cafeteria.
“Nope,” the manager said. “It’s gonna be light tonight. We don’t need you.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling a little dejected.
The little fantasy I’d carried for so long, the one where at the end of the shift, this girl would turn to me and say, “Hey, you want to get a drink or something?”
And I would say, sure, and we would go have a beer and talk and the lighting would be just right and I would be funny.
She would ask me what I’d be doing over the holiday and I would say that I’d just be staying home. She would say that’s so sad, while putting a consoling hand on my arm. We’d have a couple more beers. At the end of the evening, I’d walk her to her car. In the harsh street lamps, just before she got into her car, she’d say, “You know when I get back we should hang out.”
“Sure,” I’d say, and I would hand her a slip of paper with my hastily scribbled phone number written on it. “Give me a call when you get back in town.” And she would give me a look, that said she would be calling me when she got back into town. She would smile and get into her car and drive away.
Of course, it never happened.
Later that night, at least I think it may have been the same night, it might have been on another Thanksgiving eve, as I had prepared to spend the evening alone, there was a knock on the door. Several friends of mine showed up and they were going to a club. I have never been one to pass up a night on the town, at least back then I wasn’t, and we ventured out to a new club that had recently opened up—or it opened up that night, I can’t really remember. What I remember that night was loud music, too much beer, and running into a girl from work (still Hotel from Hell). My friends were very impressed with the girl from work as they all thought she was very attractive. I think they wanted me to get her to hang around with us so they could all get a chance to talk to her, but she was with her friends or her boyfriend. Again, I can’t remember. The next morning, I ran into her at work—the Hotel from Hell was of course open—and we were both hungover and we gave each other that short lift of the head that the other understands as: I see you, this is as much of a greeting as you’re getting out of me.
On other Thanksgiving Eves, I remember drinking with fellow denizens from the Hotel from Hell, and I always remember thinking on those nights that maybe I might meet someone or that a woman from work might take pity on me and spend the holiday weekend with me, drinking and watching movies. It never happened. Not once.
One time, several employees from the Hotel from Hell, decided to go to a downtown bar. We’d started out the night at Bennigan’s (remember those?) and then decided to try our luck downtown. As I was standing around the bar, a young woman came up to me and said my name. It took me a second before I recognized her. She had worked at the Hotel from Hell that summer before she went back to school in, I think it was, Colorado. We went through the usual catching up bull that people who haven’t seen each other in a while do. Then she said, out of the blue, “You know you were right?”
Now I am usually right about a lot of things, but I had to ask her what exactly I was right about this time.
“Moving in together,” she said. “You were right.”
That summer she worked at the Hotel from Hell, I used to run into her at Bennigan’s where everyone used to go after work or in the cafeteria. One night, I was in the cafeteria, drinking coffee or sitting around I don’t remember, and she came in and sat down. We had something passing a relationship where we talked to one another when we saw each other. Somehow, we got on the topic of relationships, of which at that point I had the wreckage of more than a few in my rearview mirror, and she told me that she and her boyfriend were going to be moving in together at the beginning of the next school year.
“Don’t do it,” I’d said, like a prick. I must have been drunk.
She looked at me incredulously. By then I’d had a number of friends who’d moved in with their significant other and not many of them were still together.
“Why?” she asked.
“It ruins the relationship if you’re not ready for what living together does to people,” I said. “You might want to wait until you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” she said too quickly.
“Okay,” I said.
And there she was, only a few months later, telling me I’d been right. Not that I relished that information in the least.
I think of her from time to time. I wish I could see her again. I wish I’d bought her a drink and talked to her for the rest of that night. But I didn’t. I think she was with some friends and that they left soon after I saw her. But I still think of her from time to time and wonder what might have been. Of course, I do.
Another time, when I was working for a catering outfit at the University of New Mexico. Around Thanksgiving time, they used to give any employee who wanted one a frozen turkey. And this wasn’t some tiny little ten-pound bird, this was like a twenty-five pound bird. Probably I would have done better with the ten-pound. If I’d have known what I was getting into I probably would have left it alone, but I got a bug up my ass about getting a free turkey. So, I asked my boss and he said sure, I could have one. The thing was bigger than a newborn! And I had no car back then. I was on a bike. But I took the bird. I rode all the way home, two-plus miles all down-hill with that gigantic bird clutched to my chest with one arm while I navigated the bike with my other arm. I made it home, but I’m sure I made the day of more than a few commuters who must have had a good laugh at what was probably an accident waiting to happen. Luckily, though, I didn’t lose it. I ended up giving the bird to a friend of mine who could use it, but until then it took up most of my freezer space.
Still another time, this was when I actually had a girlfriend during the holiday, I still spent the holiday alone. The night before we’d gone out drinking, as I had most nights before the holiday—I think there was even a holiday weekend where I drove around looking for an open bar; there was nothing open and I drove around a town that looked like The Rapture had just happened. But I was alone not because my girlfriend didn’t want me around, although she may not have, but more because I feel odd in other people’s homes celebrating a holiday that is for the family. I stayed home and made a meal for myself. She came over later and we went to see Harry Potter, the first one, that had just come out. We spent the night together, but there was still something off. I don’t mean to say there was something wrong with her, because there wasn’t. It was me: My own inability to accept what kindness another human being can extend me without wondering if it’s a trick or, if maybe, there was something else out there
One memory I don’t believe I even know how to qualify as good or bad was the time a friend of mine said she wanted to go to Tulsa to visit her family for Thanksgiving. We were sitting in the campus pizza place—it was called Itsa Pizza, and I was the janitor—when Tish brought up the subject of going to Tulsa. Back then I had a VW Bug, a powder blue one, and it worked some of the time. She said she wanted to go to Tulsa and I said Why not. I was probably more adventurous back then. I’m not so much now. I remember her saying that she said she’d pay for the gas and the snacks and that all I’d have to do is drive. Part time. She’d do half duty.
I don’t think I ever really gave it that much thought. The conversation probably went something like this.
Tish: I’d really like to go to Tulsa for Thanksgiving. I just don’t have a car.
Me: I have a car
Tish: Really? Would you want to go?
Me: Sure, I guess.
I think this conversation, if it ever happened,was within a week or two of Thanksgiving. And so, the Wednesday just before Thanksgiving we left at ten that morning for Tulsa. My friend Loni, same guy from the beginning of this, saw us off. We took off from the parking lot of Hokona Hall. Little did I know I was skipping a test in my Calculus class, but I wouldn’t realize that until I got back.
The trip out was pretty uneventful, except for one heart-stopping moment when the bug wouldn’t start. It turned out that when I had the car checked over before we left they hadn’t bothered to look at the battery, which in those old bugs was underneath the back seat. But the guy at the gas station got us some water and helped us push it down the hill to give it a start. And it worked! I remember Tish saying, “Let’s not stop again until we get there.”
“Okay,” I said.
I remember reading Thomas Harris’ Red Dragonat the time and feeling the beginnings of my discomfort already settling in, that I shouldn’t have gone on this trip: That I wasn’t going to know anyone and that I was going to feel like an idiot and that they were going to make fun of me for being so foolish. About halfway there, give or take, I started wondering if I should just ask Tish to drop me off at a hotel and to pick me up on the way back.
I remember we stopped for barbecue at a little place in Groom, Texas. When I read Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find, that is the place that I usually imagine when the family stops at Red Sammy’s barbecue.
I had quit smoking at that time, but Tish was still going at it. If I remember correctly, she was smoking Virginia Slims—these tiny toothpick cigarettes that I’m not even sure had any tobacco. Probably by the time we’d reached Oklahoma City, I was bumming them off her.
We were passing through Oklahoma City, me smoking one of her toothpick cigarettes, and we caught a radio station. The lights off the highway, in my memory are as bright as stars. And Guns-n-Roses version of “Live and Let Die” was playing on the radio. Tish didn’t like it. Or she said that something wasn’t right about it. Like the music was okay and so was the singing, but there was something missing. It’s almost thirty years later and I still don’t know what she was talking about, but when I hear that song I almost always change the station. As we passed out of Oklahoma City we lost the radio again and we travelled the rest of the way in silence.
I never did ask her to drop me off, though, I wasnervous about meeting her family even though there was no reason to be nervous. I wasn’t her boyfriend or anything. I was just some guy she knew who had a car. Nothing more than that.
All my worrying turned out for nothing. We got into Tulsa at about ten or eleven that night. It might have been earlier or later. I don’t know. We slept on the couches in the living room. I don’t think I saw more of the house than that. If it was a house. I think it might have been one of those non-mobile, mobile homes.
Thanksgiving Day was great! Her aunt, that’s who we were staying with by the way, worked in the kitchen while we watched movies with Tish’s uncle and cousins. We watched this Australian movie that I think was called The Silent Earth, though I couldn’t tell you much about it if you put a gun to my head. We also watched Madonna’ Truth or Dare which I only remember for the scene where she snubs Kevin Costner; oh, and the whole bottle thing. For the four days we were there, I think one of those movies was always on.
We ate in the early evening. The usual things. I don’t really remember. It was after supper that the fun really began. Sitting around the table, we started doing shots. Her aunt, I wish I remembered her name, took a liking to me and started calling me Stan because “You look like a Stan,” she said.
I remember it, what I remember of it, as that scene from Jawswhere Brody, Quint, and Hooper are sitting around the table toasting one another. I remember a lot of jokes and stories and laughter and drinks. I couldn’t tell you the name of a person there, other than Tish and myself, or anything that was said. But I remember feeling okay. I remember realizing that these people, even though they hardly knew me, liked me and thought I was a good person.
The rest of the trip went by too fast. Her cousin took us out to a pool hall that was so smoky you couldn’t see from one end to the other. We went to a flea market where I found Steve Martin’s A Wild and Crazy Guy on vinyl.
The last night we were there, both of us were on our sleeping couches watching The Night of the Living Dead remake. I hadn’t expected much of it, but was surprised by how good it turned out to be. As a friend of mine likes to say, it’s better than it has any right to be.
Tish said to me, “My aunt wants me to come back for Spring Break.”
“Cool,” I said.
“I’d like you to come too,” she said.
“That would be cool.”
I didn’t know if that meant anything. More than likely it was just a friendly invitation to come and hang out. It didn’t happen though.
We watched the rest of the movie.
We left on Sunday after a side trip to a friend of hers who she said had her copy of the movie Rock and Rule. It turned out that he didn’t remember where he had left it. We watched “The Simpsons” which at the time was maybe three years old and then we left Tulsa just as they were issuing Hurricane or Tornado warning, whichever it was.
The return trip was a mess. I don’t know if you know this, but VW Bugs do not have heaters. At least mine didn’t. And if it did, well, I didn’t know how to work it. The weather going out had been unseasonably warm and we had been comfortable. The weather coming back was like we’d just wandered into a Russian novel. The car had no heat, as I said. Our coats were light to say the least. We certainly didn’t have any gloves or scarves. At one point I found an ace bandage and we took turns wrapping them around our hands to keep warm. While one of us drove, the other slept if just to keep their mind off how miserable the situation was.
When we reached Amarillo, at least I think it was Amarillo, we were practically two popsicles in a VW Bug. We stopped for gas, which was all we could afford, and the people who ran the station took pity on us and gave us tall cups of coffee and these thick packing blankets. For the remainder of the drive, we were wrapped comfortably up in those blankets. I never forgot that kindness of those people even though I might not remember them. Those blankets stayed in my car until the car finally died a few years later and I abandoned it along the side of the road. I kept them there as though one day I was going to drive out to Amarillo and find that gas station and return those blankets. But I never did though.
When we got to New Mexico, I thought we were home free. It was probably only a few hours and then we’d be back in the city and then everything would be fine. That was when the snow started. A lot of people don’t believe it snows in New Mexico. I myself wasn’t aware of it until I moved here. One time my flight was stuck on the runway in Albuquerque because of snow and my mother wouldn’t believe it.
The closer we got to town, the worse the snow got until finally we were being told to get off the road. I think we got off in Clines Corners or someplace not too far from that. The air was clouded with snow and the orange lights gave the road a weird cast like we were in a David Lynch film and something strange was about to happen. We stopped at the first hotel we saw with the vacancy light on. We got a room for the night with my Discover card that I had brought along for emergencies. Tish slept on one side of the bed and I on the other. I think we slept in our clothes. The room was warm and quiet and I remember looking to the windows covered by curtains but a line of light from outside glowed in the space. I just stared at it and stared at it, until I was asleep.
The next morning, we got a wake-up call. I don’t remember the time, but I don’t think I really got what I paid for. We stopped for gas, at least I think we stopped for gas, and the attendant told us that the road to Albuquerque was ice and that travel was discouraged.
I asked Tish what she wanted to do. She said it was up to me. I didn’t like my chances. The snow was still coming down and if the roads were icy it could mean all sorts of bad things to a couple of kids in a VW Bug. I said I could put us up in another hotel room and we could make a try the next day.
She said okay.
We found a more reasonably priced Motel-6 down the way. I think I checked in alone to cut the price and she snuck in. We spent the day not doing much of anything. The TV had only three channels and not much was on. They had a free movie channel and this Winona Ryder movie Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael was on. We watched it three times. There wasn’t anything else to do.
At night, we watched the show Eerie, Indiana. I even remember the episode. It was the one about Daylight Savings and the kid doesn’t set his watch back and so he ends up out of time. Tish didn’t like it. I don’t know why I still remember it.
We went to bed. One on one side. One on the other. In our clothes. I think I was up for a while, just thinking about things. Eventually, I fell asleep.
The next morning, we were all clear for Albuquerque. The motel attendant said as much. I was driving. I started the car and when I put it into gear it made a noise. I backed out of the spot. When I put it into first the stick felt strange, like it wasn’t connected to anything. But it drove.
We stopped for gas and that was when the trip ended. We had filled the car with gas. The car started. The station was in bit of a crater. You had to get over a hump to get back on the road. Well, the bug couldn’t do it. It moved up and then rolled back. We ended up pushing it back to the station.
Immediately, I went into panic mode. Already, I had visions of us walking the rest of the way home. I had another insane idea that we were going to be stuck there forever and that we were going to have to find jobs. Tish didn’t have any better ideas and I still have a memory of her saying that we shouldn’t have stopped.
Since I had no ideas, I called the only people I knew: my roommates. I couldn’t imagine them coming out there to get us and I was right about that. They had no ideas either.
I felt awful. Not the usual kind of awful, either. This was a kind of awful that I’ve only experienced one other time in my life: That feeling where you don’t know what to do and that no one can or is going to help you; that the only option at that moment is to just walk away. But I couldn’t do that because Tish was there.
Finally, Tish grabbed the payphone and called someone. She talked for a bit and then handed me the phone. The man on the other end asked me where we were and what kind of vehicle I had and where we needed to go and the phone number of the pay phone. I would later learn that the man on the other end was her dad. But I just answered the questions. He said he’d call back in a bit.
Now, today, you could probably get yourself out of this fix with a smart phone and a credit card. But back then we only had one of those and no idea who or what to ask for help. When Tish’s dad called back, he said he’d arranged for a wrecker to come and tow us into Albuquerque. He wouldn’t be charging us directly, it would be put on the bill of the mechanic he towed us to. While that was a relief, it was still going to be expensive. I thanked Tish’s dad for the help and we waited.
It was an hour or so before the wrecker showed up. The guy had to drive out from Albuquerque to come get us, so I was getting charged for the ride out and the ride back. By that time, I didn’t care. When you’re drowning you don’t really care who pulls you out of the water, or that they’re charging you.
The tow-truck guy was nice. I thought we were going to have to sit in the VW all the way back to Albuquerque, but we sat up in the heated cab, defrosting, as he hooked up the bug to the truck. I think the man had a beard. At least he does in my memory. When we got on the highway, he offered us his thermos of coffee and gave us cigarettes. I remember he smoked Winstons.
The entire ride back, I didn’t say much. I looked out the window and watched the scenery pass by. We got into town about an hour or so later. We dropped off the car at the mechanic and the tow-guy even dropped us off at the university.
I said bye to Tish on the stairwell out of Itsa Pizza, watching her go off to work at La Posada, the school cafeteria, in her red uniform shirt. The next day I went to the barber and cut off my hair.
The next semester I dropped out of the university. I took a job as a dishwasher and later moved my way up to prep-cook. I wrote at night. I didn’t see much of anyone, not even my roommates, let alone Tish. I ran into her once and she gave me thirty or forty dollars for the hotel rooms, but other than that I didn’t talk too much or hang out with anyone.
The next time I saw Tish was at an outdoor dance held in front of the La Posada dining hall. I had driven into town for no reason I can rightly remember and as I was walking along I heard someone yell my name and there she was. She wore a black cocktail dress and was dancing atop this hill like a maniac. I went over and she hugged me.
I don’t remember much else of that night. Maybe we were drinking, but I don’t think so. I was only twenty and couldn’t get in anywhere. But I remember that Tish was happy to see me. That if I was at fault for what happened, as I had felt for that last part of the trip and for a long time after that, that I had made a mess of things, then I had been forgiven too.
Tish is gone now; she has been for a long time. I am amazed at, when I speak of the dead, that I say they are gone. The older I get, the more often I seem to use that expression. I prefer that rather than saying someone “passed on”. I guess that’s a choice everyone makes eventually.
As they years progressed, I thought of the holidays as something to get through, most often drunk. Over the past decade or so, I usually refrain from others and I find that the drinking is often harder to do than it used to be. I certainly do not take trips—that’s not just holidays. I got real gun-shy after that. Afraid of car problems. Afraid of anything and everything that could go wrong. Now, I stay home. I make something to eat. Sometimes it’s a whole Thanksgiving feast. Last year, I made a green-chili cheese burger and fries. I find that as long as I am in a warm place, with music, and my cats, with a comfortable chair piled with warm blankets, then I can relax and be at peace with my memories.
