Hoorah For the Pumpkin Pie

by Jeff Baker

I was nine years old that Thanksgiving in the early Seventies. I had been relegated to my Grandparents house so I would be out of the way of my Mom Dad’s preparations for having the family over in late afternoon. So, I was getting in the way of my Grandma. (Grandpa was wisely over at our cousin’s house, having made himself scarce.)

If I’d had any sense, I would have asked Grandma to show me what she was making and how to do it which I have realized in the decades since are handy things for a guy to know, but I didn’t. And I must have been getting in the way because Grandma suggested I might want to watch TV in the living room.

I was watching the parade on television with their tantalizing ads for the Saturday Morning cartoons they were going to show tomorrow, Friday! Joy of joys! Two days in a week to watch cartoons!! And two extra days off of school.

That was when my Grandma called me from the kitchen.

“Drew,” she said. “The milk I have is no good. I need you to go to the market and get me another carton.” She pulled out a five dollar bill from her apron pocket. I never knew whether she always carried it there of whether she’d planned this.

I got up off the floor in front of the TV and walked over and she handed me the money.

“Take your bike, I need it fast,” she said. “The market is open until two.”

I should mention that since I usually spent the night at my Grandparents on Fridays, Mom and Dad let me keep my bicycle there. Maybe they thought the streets near my Grandparents were a little safer because we lived right by the highway.

Keep in mind, none of us even thought about bicycle helmets back then.

I thanked Grandma, grabbed my sweater off the chair, said “I will” when she told me to be careful and ran out to the garage where my bicycle was leaning against the wall away from Grandma and Grandpa’s car.

I wheeled my bike out the side door, and hopped on pedaling out of the driveway and down the street to the market, really Spaulding’s Grocery which was in a little shopping center that included a laundry and a place that sold baseball cards, which Grandpa always took me to for my Birthday Present in the Summer.

But this was Thanksgiving and I was on a mission. I surveyed the large parking lot and noticed the only cars were in front of Spaulding’s. I looked around. There wasn’t any bike rack and I didn’t have a lock for my bike anyway, so I walked the bike through the doors which always swung open and always made me think of something on “Bewitched.”

There weren’t that many people in the store. A couple of people stared but I went down to where the cooler with the milk was, glancing in passing at the big, turning stand with all the comic books on it. But, I was on a mission.

I stood in front of the cooler with the milk, looking for the tall thin box that Grandma always used. Should I get something bigger? Five dollars could pay for it. But could I carry it on my bike?

I grabbed the container and wheeling the bike with one hand, and holding the milk with the other I got in the short line.

Mister Spaulding, (probably one of the younger Spauldings I realize now but at age nine he looked as old as a teacher) gave my bike the once-over but I put my milk on the conveyor belt and handed him the money which I’d kept stuffed in my pocket. He counted out the change and I counted it again and thanked him as he put my milk and the receipt in a paper bag and handed it to me.

I walked out of the store with my bike and the milk, wondering how I was going to do this.

I buttoned my sweater up all the way, tucked it into my pants and put the milk in the sweater so I could hang onto it by keeping my one arm up next to my chest letting me still hold the bike handles with both hands as I carefully pedaled back to Grandma.

That was the first time anybody had trusted me with an errand like that on that Thanksgiving so many years ago.

The decades went by and the Spauldings sold their grocery stores to a big chain and that whole shopping center has been closed for years. I see it every now and then when I’m on that side of the city and decide to drive through the neighborhoods and see Grandma and Grandpa’s old house. Inevitably I drive by the old shopping center and smile when I remember that for years every time I’d go in there Mr. Spaulding would look at me and say “Drew! Where’s the bike?”

And I’d smell that Thanksgiving meal cooking so long ago.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! We’ll be taking a break for Thanksgiving Week next week but will be back with a new story on Friday December 5^th, 2025. Until then, take care! —–jeff