NOTEBOOK -- steve marble

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, but already I grow reflective, taking

stock of my blessings.

I am thankful for a small dark coffee at Diedrich’s in the morning. I am

thankful for Randy Harvey’s column in the sports section of the Times. I

am thankful for the cilantro pepper sauce at Wahoos.

I am thankful for the smell of the pine trees in the Sierras, the glassy

waves at Crescent Beach in the late afternoon, the sound of Vin Scully’s

voice in the early days of spring training.

I’m thankful for the sound of my kids’ voices when I come home from work.

I’m thankful for the way my wife laughs. I’m thankful that my boss always

remembers to put my name in his annual Thanksgiving column.

Small things impress me most. Maybe I’m just simple, not quite capable of

taking on weighty affairs. Some people are thankful for advances in

medicine, breakthroughs in genetics, startling discoveries and high-level

mergers. Me? I’m thankful for fresh bagels and the smell of the air in

the morning when I go out for a run.

Thanksgiving is the one time of the year when it’s OK to be simple. We’re

supposed to take stock of the basics, spend a moment or two thinking

about the things that we take for granted the rest of the year.

I was reminded of that a couple years ago when when my wife and I packed

up the kids and headed north for Thanksgiving. Now, there’s north and

there’s way up north. This was, in my book, way up north.

My wife’s relatives live in a tiny town with a tiny name in the shadow of

Mount Shasta, a wondrously beautiful spot tangled in pines, surrounded by

craggy mountains and blessed with dark blue lakes and crisp air.

The town consisted of precious little. A hardware shop, a grocery store,

a five and dime and a tired-out A&W; Root Beer stand that looked like it

had been snatched straight out of the ‘50s. The town was still mourning

the loss of its movie theater, which had been shuttered when the owner

finally conceded he just couldn’t make a go of it.

It was a friendly place. When we stopped at the grocery store, the lone

cashier looked us over and said, “You must be the Marbles.” Our arrival,

crazy as it might seem, somehow passed for news up there in the

mountains.

Like most of the people in town, my wife’s uncle was a bit of a jack of

all trades. He taught at the high school, sold real estate to the

occasional buyer, did roofing and, on weekends, fixed lawn mowers --

which, given the average snowfall, was a fairly seasonal job. Put all the

jobs together and he was able to muscle out a modest existence for his

family.

Thanksgiving was a cold but clear day. Smoke curled from chimneys.

Brittle but colorful leaves blew up and down the street. The paper mill,

the town’s biggest employer but one that would later go bust, was shut

down for the day, flooding the modest downtown with pedestrians.

It was, it turned out, local tradition to go fishing early in the

morning. Nothing like a couple of rainbows to round out Thanksgiving

dinner.

The lake was glass, golden in the early morning sun and then a wicked

gray as the clouds rolled through. It was so cold I could barely hold

onto the pole, let alone concentrate on catching anything. I saw a buck

standing in the tall grass on the first side of the lake. But when I

looked back, it was gone.

Dinner consisted of quail, venison and trout. It was a hearty meal for

mountain people, but for me it was a tough eat. I was thankful, suddenly,

that there was an A&W; on the edge of town.

When the meal was over, everyone wandered out back and watched the sun go

down. Watching the sun set, it turned out, was also something of a local

tradition. And when it went down, we sat in the dark and talked and

laughed.

They were thankful when the sun went down. And they would be thankful

again when it came back up the next morning.

It was a small town. And people there were thankful for small things.

* STEVE MARBLE is the managing editor of Times Community News and can be

reached at o7 Steve.Marble@latimes.comf7 .