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My mother’s mother, Laura Ramlo, and her husband Bert, owned a grocery store in Upsala, Minnesota. Most of us called her Grandma Ramlo instead of Grandma Laura and some just called her Gram. They lived behind the store in small quarters. The bedroom didn’t even have doors. There were entrances from both the dining room and the living room with heavy drapes hanging from poles. They heated the living space with a fuel oil burner that was in the dining room and it had to be filled often. The store was heated with a wood burning stove. The wood and the fuel oil were stored in the attached warehouse. That was convenient.

Gram was famous for her Thanksgiving dinners which were more like a feast. Owning a grocery store made it easy for her to offer all three: turkey, beef and pork, some years. Grandpa Bert would complain about her “raiding the stock” but not too hard. My job was to fill the crystal water glasses with water from the cistern pump in the kitchen. The kids would sit at card tables in the living room. We would always sing the “doxology” and express our thanks for the goodness in our lives and the food on the table. Every year, Gram would offer her apologies for the food, even though it was awesome. “I don’t know why I keep doing this, I just can’t cook anymore.” Not true Gram.

I trust that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast yesterday.

“If more if us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” J.R.R. Tolkien author of The Hobbit.