Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Nov. 21, 2011

Another Mannerly Thanksgiving

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Once again it is time for Thanksgiving break here at the Gaylesville Mannerly Man campus. One of the things we were thankful for this year was our Registrar and Custodial Engineer, Miss Selma Dalyrimple. Even when things seemed to be going downhill and the rest of the staff was discouraged, Selma could find something to be thankful for. When I swerved off the road to miss that cat last month and hit a tree, Selma told me how thankful she was that I missed the cat. When our assistant librarian, Neva Postum, found a swarm of bees out behind her mobile home and came in with her face all covered in bee stings, baking soda and meat tenderizer, Selma told Neva she should be thankful they weren’t African killer bees. And when Dr. Hacklespeck, Chairman of our Deliberate Snubs and Insults Department, suffered that concussion when he was hit by an errant golf ball, Selma told him how thankful he should be that it wasn’t a bowling ball. Old Thankful Dalyrimple, we called her, and we had assigned her the task of compiling a long list of things we all could be thankful for this year. Unfortunately last week Selma’s old Pontiac slipped off the jack and out of gear while she was getting ready to change the front tire. It rolled over her left foot, caught her skirt on the license plate and dragged her down the hill into her chicken coop, killing several hens and her favorite rooster, LaMont. She broke her femur and two metatarsals, fractured three ribs, and lost her new dentures. When I visited her in the hospital and told her how thankful I was that her Pontiac, which was totaled, was only an old, economy-sized Sunbird, and not something more valuable, like a vintage GTO, she said something that sounded like “FFTHIT!”

So due to circumstances beyond our control, we have no Mannerly Man list of things we are thankful for this year. Instead we must fall back on our old standby–Thanksgiving Day Mannerly Man Questions and Answers:


Q: I told Momma that Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims landed was named after a town in England, and she swore up and down it was named after a car. She said she seen a picture of it once, and it looked more like a Buick than a Plymouth because it didn’t have no fins, but it still looked way more like a car than a town. I told her they didn’t have no automobiles back then, and she said they had them way back when Meemaw was a little girl, which was around the same time the Pilgrims landed. So my question is when should I bring up to Gerald and Marvin and Denise and Beverly which is my brothers and sisters the idea of putting Momma in a home?

A: You may want to wait until after Thanksgiving.


Q: But she always starts a ruckus at holiday meals. Last year her and Aunt Lucille and Aunt Lurleen got into it over whether the Pilgrims was Baptists or Methodists and Momma said if they was Methodists they certainly wouldn’t of wasted all that whiskey throwing it into Boston Harbor which aggravated Lucille who is one herself, by which I mean a Methodist not a Pilgrim, so they all got to slinging cranberry sauce at each other until Meemaw she told them they might be middle-aged women but they still wasn’t too old for her to take a hickory to them and then Lucille she said there wasn’t no way Momma was middle-aged unless she planned to live to 145, and then her and Lurleen and Meemaw they got to laughing which flew all over Momma and–

A: I spoke too soon. You may want to call your brothers and sisters tonight.


Q: Uncle Leonard is an Auburn fan and a Republican, and Uncle Nub is an Alabama fan and a Democrat. Is there any possible way of keeping them from talking about either football or politics this Thanksgiving?

A: No. And if one of them starts brandishing his steak knife, make sure he’s only planning to carve the Thanksgiving squirrel.


Q: Daddy he likes to spread himself at big family meals. He don’t never darken a church door nor open a Bible, but he can pray over a meal like a regular sanctified deacon, especially when he’s had a few snorts of Jack Daniels before he commences. When we had our Ludpacker family reunion last month he prayed over the food and that prayer covered everything from the economy to the Middle East crisis to them pitiful Atlanta Braves to missionaries toiling away in darkest Africa and so on and so forth. After fifteen minutes or so he finally got around to thanking the Lord for the food on the table which should be blessed to the nourishment of our bodies and itemized each and every bit, including the giblet gravy, the pickles, the seasoning and the fine table setting which was only paper plates and plastic silverware. When he finally said “AMEN,” my cousin Earl’s boy, Little Ernie, he let out a big sigh and hollered, “AMEN, BROTHER BEN, LET A TOOT AND KILT A HEN!” Daddy he got red in the face and told Earl he ort to take a stick to that boy, and Earl he told Daddy to hush up and let us eat before the yeller jackets made off with what was left of the tater salad. It put a damper on the proceedings, and everybody was real quiet until after the meal and Uncle Norman he got out his guitar and we had the family sing along which always starts out with ‘Will the Circle be Unbroken?’ and then–

A: What is your question?


Q: Where was I?

A: Singing ‘Will the Circle be Unbroken?’


Q: Oh yeah. So how long can tater salad sit out before it goes bad? Eight or nine of us got the stomach cramps after that meal.

A: Half an hour, tops. If your father plans to grace the table this Thanksgiving, you need to tell your mother to go with cornbread dressing, no eggs.


And if you are casting about for something to be thankful for, you may rest assured that there will be no more Mannerly Man Thanksgiving columns until next year.