My father, early on during the depression, went into the restaurant business with Jimmy Mott and his his brother in Ann Arbor - The Brown Jug on S. University and it is still in business to this day. He had good stories about that time and place, never ending batches of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. Certainly no foo-foo stuff.
Everyone has a place like that in their lives. In Valparaiso, Indiana where I spent my first couple years of college, it was the Dixie Dinner just over from the fraternity house. It sat about 10 people and the cook/waitress actually lived out back. For $1.00 you got a hamburger and a bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and a glass of milk.
Thanksgiving meals are not about things other than comfortable food, simple, traditional, and wildly evocative of last year and 10 years ago and perhaps half a century of remembered meals. I was talking to my son in law about Super bowls and that in my life I've been to one of them although I do remember the first one on TV - but I wasn't even sure where it was other than Florida (so it had to be Miami) and for the life of me I can't remember who was playing. I was in town for some music thing and we went to a stadium (must have been the Orange Bowl perhaps?) and hung out and someone gave us tickets at halftime. Obviously not a pro football fan here.
But I can tell you in mind numbing detail about how the turkey looked sitting on the carving board in a kitchen 50 years ago, the steam from the juices being reduced, Brussels sprouts in their dish and a bubbly concoction of green beans, mushroom soup and fried onions. Yum.
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