Giving thanks, Society Page style


by Ted Holteen

As holidays go, it’s hard to beat Thanksgiving. No one outside of the staff of Randy’s has to work, there’s football from dawn ’til dark, and the central activity of the day is eating. And unlike so many of those other holydays, the sinful overindulgence of the day doesn’t come burdened by the guilty yoke of a church service. Three dinners? Four bottles of wine? Go ahead Caligula! Call that new escort service while you’re at it. (See Telegraph classifieds on the last page of last week for that number.) We Americans have collectively gotten past the whole inter/intracontinental genocide thing and should feel no remorse whatsoever when celebrating our good fortune through gluttony. I don’t, anyway.

The Thanksgiving break also means another light weekend for nightlife in the big city, but you should be used to that by now. So I need filler, and lots of it. I’ll start with an old standby for columnists from Bombeck to Barry, the list of things for which I am thankful. (I think I had to do this in first grade or Sunday school. I liked to make up really extravagant lies to make the poor kids feel worse: i.e. – “I’m thankful for my never-say-die Rolex and my Dad’s really cool helicopter and Ninja bodyguards. How’s your mayonnaise sandwich?” No one liked me very much as a child, either.)

I’M THANKFUL:

• That the national media has reopened the evolution debate by adding a new catchphrase to the vernacular – “Intelligent Design.” Further thanks to that other Durango newspaper for having the journalistic foresight to allow religious debate on its opinion page. Someone please let me know when we find out for sure where it all got started. Should be any day now.

• For Donald Rumsfeld, who for the bargain price of $160 billion has prevented me from being attacked by the bow and arrow-toting army of Middle Eastern refugees that must be a constant and daily threat to us to warrant the mobilization of the most technologically advanced and powerful military in world history 8,000 miles from our homeland. And he’s done it all while keeping gas prices under 3 bucks! (for the most part)

• That BP has finally found some value in the heretofore worthless lands of the Southwest and will soon move their national headquarters here. It’ll be nice to meet some folks who realize that there’s more to public lands than hiking and camping and all that other hippie crap.

• That I won’t be up at 8:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning running in some foot race. That reminds me. Durango Motorless Transit, a group of well-conditioned and good-intentioned people, really are putting on a foot race Thanksgiving morning. The Turkey Trot is a 5-mile race or a 1-mile fun run, your choice, although both seem daunting to me. They start up on the FLC campus at 10 a.m. (it’s the registration that starts at 8:30.) Call Nick at 382-8005 for more info, as I have exhausted my knowledge of running with this paragraph.

• That I don’t work for General Motors.

Now, how about a list of wacky Thanksgiving trivia?

DID YOU KNOW:

• That the Mayflower dropped off the Pilgrims in 1620, went back to England and by 1622 was sold for scrap wood? By some accounts the wood was later used in a barn in Jordan, England, but supporting evidence is anecdotal at best. Either way, nothing remains from the ship today.

• D.B. Cooper chose Thanksgiving for his historic hijacking of a 727 in 1971 when he vanished with $200,000 somewhere over Oregon? Fascinating story.

• The D&SNGRR (that’s the train) runs a train called the Polar Express every weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas? It’s billed as a 1-hour, 15-minute round trip journey to the North Pole with Santa, hot chocolate, cookies and singing. I think it’s for kids.

• The Gonzalez family celebrated Thanksgiving ’99 on a boat between Cuba and Miami? It wasn’t a good boat. Would anyone be surprised if a teen-aged Elian takes a shot at President Castro in the next year or two?

• That the FLC soccer team has bigger issues than whether to roast or deep fry? They’ll be playing in the NCAA Division II National Semifinal on Saturday. That’s one game short of the national title game, which they would play if they beat the Lynn University Fighting Knights from Boca Raton, Fla., this weekend. Lynn is a girl’s name, so I predict an easy victory. You probably can’t attend in person as the Final Four is in Wichita, Texas, but it’s on the radio at either 1 or 4 p.m. on KIUP, AM 930.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Really, I like this one. I’m not being snide, I think it’s a great time, and it’s fun to get a big group together to eat and drink to excess with no apologies. I can even root for the Broncos on Turkey Day (lesser of two evils, but whatever). And, trite a sentiment as it may seem, I’ve got to say it. Please don’t drink and drive. It sucks, and consequently those who do it suck. Thank you.

I’m a terrible cook – feed me. egholteen@hotmail.com. Thanksgiving’s nice in North Carolina, or so I hear. •