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By Tom Boggs

You know, I flat out didn’t write a column for this week last week the way I usually do, and I’m getting ready to head out to court this morning. I know there is an early newspaper deadline due to Thanksgiving, so I’ll just knock out a few words of thanksgiving, and zip it off to the papers with my thanks for their running my little old writing each week for near ‘bout thirty years.

Let’s every one of us pause and reflect on good times we’ve had, and then praise the Lord for seeing us through the bad times.  One of my favorite Bible verses is Romans 8:18: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

I was just that moment thinking about my Godly Daddy and Mama.  We lived a simple but loving and caring life together in that little wooden house, where Ma cooked up some kinda good eating in that little bitty kitchen that just seemed to fit her.  I can see a photograph in my mind that is in an album at home.  It depicts Daddy coming in the back door with a big mess of bass he had caught down on the Bogue, and Ma, standing in the kitchen, throwing up her hands with a big smile at the love of her life who had just brought in what she would cook for supper. Thanksgiving.

As I sat at the breakfast table before day this morning, my mind zeroed in on Frank Aydelott and Melvin Moose Glass, two of the greatest friends a boy and a man could have.  Being thankful for the adventures we had around Linden Town as boys, and the honor of wearing the red and white football jerseys back yonder in the fifties, and the times we had out at my farm camp house as older men every year until they both left down here to be with the heavenly hosts, being thankful that they knew where they were  going.

How thankful I am as I think about children, grandchildren and great grandchildren being at that camp house this Thanksgiving Day, loving each other, playing, feeding the cows and donkey, eating together, and just flat out being thankful together.

This country has come quite a ways since those Pilgrams sat down for the first Thanksgiving meal.  What some changes I’ve personally witnessed in these past eighty five years, one of my earliest memories being thankful for the victory in World War II.  There have been ups and downs in this, the greatest nation God has ever allowed to exist, but, praise the Lord, we bounce back, and can be thankful that this nation, under God, will continue the march, and be good.

Amen