Corner Column

By Phil Major
publisher@wood.cm
Posted 11/24/22

by Phil Major

“Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow-ow.”

As a kid growing up in north-central and eastern Texas in the 1960s, the woods we traversed were generally the Piney Woods of East Texas.

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“Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.

“The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow-ow.”

As a kid growing up in north-central and eastern Texas in the 1960s, the woods we traversed were generally the Piney Woods of East Texas.

The only horses were grazing quietly in pastures and probably had never been within two states of a sleigh.

The sleigh was a 1964 aqua blue Plymouth Valiant station wagon with three squirming kids in the back seat, and there was rarely even a flake of snow – certainly no drifts.

But we sang the song nonetheless, usually on Thursday morning or perhaps Wednesday afternoon.

Nowadays they take off a whole week for Thanksgiving. We got just two days, Thursday and Friday. Can you imagine what a nightmare that would be now? No one driving on Interstate 35 would arrive before Friday.

Funny how so many holiday melodies revolve around New England-type settings, a visual only exacerbated by Hallmark movies.

Their plots never occur in places like Gilmer or Gladewater, some of the towns along our route as we made our way to Longview, first from Commerce and later from Denton.

Ever the sentimentalist, Mom once tried to recreate “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” in her electric oven.

She must not have had instructions that warned they could explode. She had a mess and the kitchen had a pungent aroma for weeks.

But make our way to Grandmother’s house we did, every Thanksgiving that I can remember from the late 1950s to the early ‘70s.

Before the construction of Interstate 20 was completed east of Dallas, the journey took us through more small towns than I can recall.

They say that smells can evoke strong memories, and thus is the case with that unique aroma of the oilfield. Whether it was the East Texas derricks or those around Baytown on the way to the other grandparents, it is an odor I will not soon banish from the memory banks.

Before the storm of Nov. 4 caused us to reroute our recent family legacy trip around East Texas, we were supposed to take a brief swing by that Longview house, where once stood three mimosa trees – a perfect match, one for each of us three kids to climb. Google shows they are no longer there, though the house still stands.

Another, similar smell to recall, the oil sand street in front of the grandparents’ house.

In addition to the biggest and best meal of the year, the long weekend often included Lions and Cowboys pro football games and college rivalries such as Texas and T-A&M and Oklahoma-Nebraska, likely in black-and-white in those earlier years.

All three of Mom’s sister were in attendance, in later years joined by two husbands, so there was always a houseful, but somehow we all found a place to sleep. I think I have probably laid my head down in all three bedrooms plus the living room and maybe even the den added onto the back of the carport.

It was an adventure for a youngster. There was never a question that we had so very much for which to be thankful, and I have learned many times since that not all are so fortunate.

Our gratefulness continues despite so many who are long gone from our midst. Wonderful memories, though, remain.