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Dorothy knew what she was talking about:  there’s no place like home.  Santa Fe is stunning anytime of year, but especially at the holidays.  And while Buttercup and I were loath to leave it, the nurturing bosom of Fort Stockton is always a welcome sight.

After unpacking and going through the stack of mail on the kitchen table, the first order of business was heading over to the Grounds for Divorce.  I wanted to check on Lucinda and make sure she survived the holiday.  This was the first Thanksgiving since she sent Delgado packing.  Having two grown daughters with their own share of experiencing the trauma of love gone wrong, I was concerned.

I shouldn’t have been.

Lucinda is as resilient as she is easy on the eyes and said it had been a great holiday.  It didn’t appear that she was stretching the truth in any way.  “Delgado was just a chapter.  I don’t look at it as being ‘over,’” she said.  “Just finished.  I’ve moved on.”  And I suppose she has.

Of course, I had to wander over to the corkboard next to the wall phone over by the cash register to see what pictures had been added in her “Feast of Cars” pie promotion.  There had certainly been some good ones pinned up before we left town.   I was pretty sure there would be more.  I wasn’t disappointed.

“Mrs. Drury dropped off that one,” Lucinda said as she pointed to the upper right hand corner.  The card next to the snapshots read, “The year Mom brought a new husband to Thanksgiving dinner.  It had only been six months since Dad passed.  The family was shocked to meet Ed.  Even more shocked to find out he drove an Edsel.  So many questions . . . .”

“Becky from the Ben Franklin dropped off this pair,” Lucinda said.  She pointed to a couple pictures tacked up to the board together.  Lucinda smiled at first, then chuckled under her breath.

The picture showed two lovely young women from the late sixties standing in front of a fire engine red Pontiac Tempest coupe.  The hair was piled high on each of their heads.  Each was dressed smartly in a two piece suit, their arms wrapped around each other.

The card read, “The year Aunt Sally brought home her ‘new friend’.  Dad said at least we wouldn’t need any more chairs at the kids’ table.”

“This was a sweet one,” Lucinda said.  “Well, bittersweet, I guess.  Chad dropped it off.”

The pictures looked newer than most of the rest of them on the cork board.  The car was the only one that was a foreign make out of all of them.  The card next to it was simple, the handwriting hard to make out.  Kind of scratchy.  “My mom in the kitchen.  My brother and his young family out front.  Never dreamed it would be the last time we were all together.”

I looked at the board.  There were dozens of photos of cars and families and dining room tables and multiple generations.  Photos pinned up that hadn’t seen the light of day in years perhaps.  I told Lucinda that she’d done a good job coming up with the idea.  “It’s been good for business,” she said.  

She made it sound like it was a business decision, when I knew darn well that wasn’t it at all.  “How much pie did you end up giving away in the last week and a half?”  I asked her.

“I went through a lot of pies, no doubt,” she replied.  “But a lot of people came in to pin up their pictures and get their free pie but then stayed all morning talking about Thanksgiving from years past .  A lot of them stayed for lunch.  Most all left big tips.  In the end, it worked out well for everybody.  Pastor Peterson even said he was going to use some of the Kodachrome images in his holiday message.  Who knew the whole thing would end up being so inspirational?”

I glanced down at a couple of pictures and an index card tucked in at the bottom of the cork board.  There was a picture of a ’58 Pontiac Bonneville coupe with a seasoned couple leaning against the passenger side.  The picture beside it was a group of older folks and two young boys.  “Rusty dropped that off the other day,” Lucinda said.  “Read the card.”

It wasn’t a card, actually.  It was written on the back of a hardware store receipt.  It said, “My brother and me.  We couldn’t wait to get away from the table and go play. What I wouldn’t give to go back and talk to those relatives now.”

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And such is the circle of life. Thanksgivings and memories and food and relatives we look forward to seeing, and those we’ll never see again. Not on earth, anyway. And we celebrate the cars that take us on all those journeys, from holiday to holiday and memory to memory and to see the relatives and what they drive.

We now focus on the next holiday and all that goes along with it. And look for Peace on Earth, and Goodwill Towards Men. And stories that cause a chuckle, make us think, or remind of us something from a long time ago.

Have a good week,

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