Thanksgiving in Asheville (November 2018)

Some of this post may look familiar because it was included in a general email on 1 December. But much of the text and all of the photos are new.

We had a scare on our way to Asheville. A white car apparently got tired of waiting at a stop sign. It pulled out in front of us and Bill had to execute an emergency stop. Our 28ft, 5 ton vehicle does not stop on a dime, but we did halt before any contact was made, thank goodness.

Thanksgiving was on 22 November in 2018 because that was the 4th Thursday of the month. Fixing the date that way is a fairly recent step. We are unclear how the date was determined long ago. Like Easter, it slithered around the calendar. It seemed to have something to do with sun spot activity, who won the last World Series (baseball) and the length of the President's nose, but maybe we misunderstood. ;-)

It is an important holiday in America. It is a time for families to get together and eat an enormous, turkey-based meal. At Christmas more turkey is eaten, but Christmas is not the family occasion that it is in New Zealand and England.

So we were most fortunate to be invited to share Thanksgiving with Susan and John Mycroft (friends of Bill's from Auckland days) in Asheville, North Carolina. We had previously visited them in late October. Thank you, Susan and John. We are truly grateful for two doses of your witty company and warm hospitality.  Thanks, too, to Chris next door who allowed us to park on his property.

We volunteered to be kitchen slaves to help with the preparation, but Susan is a particularly gentle slave-driver and we didn't have to work terribly hard. We were joined at the table by Susan and John's son, Sam, who was home from university, plus Susan's sister Laurie and her husband, Dave.

Not only did we feast royally, we enjoyed the Mycrofts' particular traditions of watching Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, Macey's Thanksgiving Day Parade and Holiday Inn – the Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire black and white movie with a feeble and improbable plot but lots of great singing and dancing. It was so cold in New York that the Macey's Parade organisers had determined a temperature below which the Parade would be cancelled. Luckily it went ahead, but many of the dancers wore sneakers for better traction. The quality of the singing was very good for outdoors and no visible microphone; anyone would think they were lip-synching. Especially when one famous but now elderly singer forgot to even mime the words!

During these few days we went on an expedition to the Botanical Gardens. There wasn't much interesting plant life in late November, but some extravagant Christmas decorations were already on display.

The Mycrofts refuse to put up their Xmas lights until after Thanksgiving. But there was no further delay. They had to take advantage of Sam being home to help!

Sam, Susan, Bill, Eve and John.

The lights. ☺