Back to the Future: Thanksgiving Slideshow

Some of the power inherent in family traditions is their timeless pull — no matter how many years have passed, you feel like you could dust off the old recipe and serve it up that day to acclaim and applause, or creak open an old family album and step right into the photos there.

Part of what’s so compelling about the Thanksgiving, 1949 photographs I’ve shared in a couple blog posts in the decade or so since I unearthed them are all the elements that could have easily taken place today, 70 years later:

• Grandparents fussing over little ones and bustling about the kitchen
• Cousins and siblings and parents jammed elbow to elbow before an unending spread
• Family gripping and grinning for whatever video camera or Polaroid or amped-up phone is circulating
• And, oh, that spread: turkey, and stuffing, and potatoes, and green beans, and pumpkin pie, and coffee and beer and wine: chances are, any time-traveler among us would eat very well, and on familiar grub (but I just bet it tasted better back then, clouds of dinnertime cigarette smoke notwithstanding)

So, just as we’d love to roll back the years (decades!) and step into Grandma and Grandpa Foutz’s place on Front Street in Dover in November 1949, I’d like to hope they’d be equally welcome and at home among the plates and chairs and tables and little ones underfoot today — even with video games and e-readers and streaming movies and mobile phones.

Here’s a glimpse of the timeless fun. Who knows? 70 years from now it will seem quaint, but inviting.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

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