Randy Smith
Thanksgiving has always been one of my very favorite holidays, simply because it kick-starts the Christmas season. There is always great food, family and football on Thanksgiving, but my fondest memories of Thanksgiving involve much more than food and football. As a young child growing up in Nashville, my father had been laid off from his job at DuPont and we moved in with my grandparents on their farm in Waverly, Tennessee. My granddad, Lester Trotter owned about 100 acres between Waverly and Erin and that farm was always my favorite place in the world to visit.
The meals my grandmother Thelma prepared three times a day were out of this world, always with fresh meat straight from the smokehouse. I learned how to appreciate good food from my grandparents table, which can also be a bad thing.
We had the most amazing Thanksgiving celebrations that any family in the world could have. You see, Thanksgiving was more than just eating until you're ready to burst and watching football on television all afternoon. Thanksgiving was always "hog-killing" time;. A day when your neighbors would always join you before the sun came up to slaughter the hogs ands prepare the meat for the next year. I never got into the slaughter of the hogs; just the eating of the finished product. While the actual slaughtering was going on, I always went into the woods and played, though I could still tell you how the procedure went.
After the work was done in the early afternoon, the Thanksgiving meal was ready. All the men ate first, then the women and children sat down for their meal. I was always fortunate to be able to eat with the men, though in today's society, that theory would never fly. You know, the women preparing the meal, then watching as all the men sat down to eat. There was always plenty of food, so the women were able to eat more than just leftovers when it was their turn.
After most of the neighbors had left, the family prepared the sausage. It was processed in a huge metal tub, and all kinds of sage and other spices were mixed in by hand. While this was going on, my grandmother would bake up a batch of biscuits to use to "try out" the sausage. I always got to eat the first sausage and biscuit, simply because I was the first grandchild. But the next couple of sausage and biscuits were the ones that counted, because they were the ones that told you whether or not the sausage needed more sage or more of some of the other spices. When it was finely deemed ready, the sausage was then stuffed in sacks and hung in the smoke house, with the bacon and country hams. At dark, we brought the leftovers out and enjoyed a quiet and peaceful family meal. Since I had been up with my grandfather since 4:00 am, many times I missed this meal because I was so sleepy I couldn't hold my head up.
That's the way it was in the "country" in the 1950s. Neighbors sharing work and helping each other out, all the while celebrating their Thanksgiving holiday together. In 2016 things have certainly changed. I seriously doubt if anyone kills hogs on Thanksgiving Day anymore, and if they do, I doubt that their neighbors would spend their holiday helping them. Today more than ever before we need a willingness to cooperate with each other......to work together in harmony and to put differences aside for the greater good.
On this Thanksgiving holiday, I hope you all have a wonderful day and make memories that will last forever with your families. Remember, the things you do for your children and grandchildren could have an effect on them that will last forever.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer.
His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for thirty years.
He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century.
In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have five grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, Mattingly, DellaMae, and CoraLee.