A psychedelic Thanksgiving...Dude

I didn't grow up with many Holiday rituals unless you count television, which I do not. In my young adulthood I took it upon myself to institute the tradition of roasting chestnuts. They are warm and delicious and fill your belly with old-timey nostalgia. They make you wish you had been born to a big good looking family of well-off Easterners who drank hot chocolate and went snowshoeing in real wool sweaters from Ireland. I had several tastey and satisfying years under my belt until this one year, I was at my folks newly purchased house. My crazy Mother had a plastic grocery bag full of "chestnuts" waiting for me...she said there was a tree on the property. While they all went shopping I prepared and roasted the nuts. And ate a few. The first was bitter. The second more so. The third I spit out. And staring at the drain in the kitchen sink my vision started to quiver and vibrate.

I suddenly felt very sluggish and not myself at all. I sat on the kitchen counter just staring at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the little black and white television on top of the frige. Staring for hours at the whole parade with all the commercials and screaming singers from bad Broadway plays and marching bands from every American podunk town and horribly written jokes from the morning TV talking heads, not moving at all. Just the occasional blink.

In a stupor, I deemed the nuts unfit for consumption or even my Mother's stuffing. Watching Dad carve the bird was both mesmerizing and terrifying.

I remember chit chatting the whole day thinking I was very clever, but I'm sure I was a complete bore.

The moral of the story? Number 1: Chestnut trees do not grow in California. Number 2: Chestnuts are not to be confused with Horse Chestnuts or Buckeyes. The extract of which Native Americans used on their spear tips to stun their game. Number 3: Never sit and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from start to finish.