Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Talking a Little Turkey... But Mostly Talking Thanks
By Milt Gross
Nov 25, 2008 - 1:51:54 PM

Thanksgiving has remained my favorite holiday over the many years it has taken for me to become 29.5 on my birthday, which this year is the day following Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving this year offers Dolores and me two special reasons to be thankful, as we spend the day at home or on a quiet walk and then enjoying our modest turkey dinner. One reason is major. After six years of leasing out our own house in Washington County and renting various apartments and houses in or nearer our bases of Ellsworth and Bar Harbor, this year we own our own home once more -- in the woods just outside of Ellsworth.

Our Final Resting Place came to us despite our worry that it wouldn't because we found it and applied for a mortgage during the height of the ongoing mortgage crisis. We had no money for a down payment, since we hadn't sold our Washington County house because evicting the tenant, who has violated his lease in numerous ways, is taking a long time. We weren't about to accept an adjustable-rate mortgage, a major cause of the economic crisis.

“Your's will probably be among the last hundred percent mortgages offered,” Mitchell Small of Coastal Mortgage in Ellsworth told us as he prepared the paperwork.

Within a week after the closing, those 100%-financed mortgages ended. Further, our mortgage has a reasonable percentage rate fixed for 30 years.

So we, our two kitties, and all the critters who will visit us for part of their Thanksgiving Day vittles, as they do every day and night, have a major reason to celebrate this Thanksgiving.

Secondly, last week we were accepted for an L.L. Bean credit card -- within 60 seconds after the “credit application specialist” to whom I was talking on the phone hit the key to apply. This means some credit problems we had experienced over the years due to illness and not enough money coming our way have apparently been fixed.

It also means we can use that credit judiciously to buy what we need from that company, which liberally helps support the Island Explorer bus system that employs me along with donating to other groups, such as the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, which has supported me emotionally in large part for over 30 years.

Still being 29.5 on my above-mentioned approaching birthday, after having been in MATC for over 30 years, could be yet another reason for me to be thankful. I know a miracle when I meet one.

I have met some. Dolores had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm in 1993, which was supposed to have left her dead but didn't, thanks to an alert local physician and skilled surgeons using a brand-new, electronic procedure. I had prostate cancer but don't, thanks to our wise doctor mentioning an alternative treatment that did not involve radiation, surgery, or any of the other horrible so-called cancer treatments that range our medical wilderness.

We're looking forward to enjoying our Thanksgiving together.

We're thankful that the bad old days of Thanksgiving are far behind us. No more having to eat two Thanksgiving dinners at two sets of relatives, both of whom would have been offended had we not been at their house for the special turkey feast -- the second of which tended to make us feel ill from two much special. No more partaking of those awful family squabbles, which made no sense at all except to give us reason to not keep returning “home” to rejoin their Thanksgiving celebration. No more of those long trips back to Pennsylvania and returning home to Maine during the season's first snow storm, much of the trip in the dark of night over hard-to-see snow-covered pavement.

Finally, we're thankful we were not with that original bunch of Thanksgivingers in Massachusetts during those way-before-the-good-present days. (Did they really have that great feast of thanks outdoors as the paintings show -- in late November?) Had we been with them, I wouldn't be able to tippy tappy away on this column on Mr. Macintosh and then send it to the publisher via e-mail.

And, had we been with them, we wouldn't be able to enjoy this year's Thanksgiving.

This year's Thanksgiving's my favorite holiday.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.