Giving Thanks

The following piece written by U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. appeared in the Thanksgiving 2009 edition of Blount Today:

This will be my 62nd Thanksgiving, and, fortunately, every one has been spent in Tennessee.

Each Thanksgiving has been a time with family and friends and food and football.

It is one of my favorite holidays, and turkey and dressing are two of my favorite foods.

I eat way too much.  But as I told a group in Madisonville several years ago, the rest of my body is not much to brag about, but I was blessed with some of the greatest taste buds in the history of the world.

Almost everything tastes good to me, and my wife, Lynn, is a great cook.

I love dumplings and Sister Schubert rolls with real butter and pumpkin pie with real whipped cream and extra cranberry sauce.

For many years we would play football in our front yard.  Now, I have heard that turkey makes you sleepy, and I believe it, because I usually take a brief nap and then just watch football on TV.

In 1968, I was working as a reporter for the Knoxville Journal, which was a morning daily newspaper.  As low man on the totem pole, I had to work both Thanksgiving and Christmas that year, but I still made sure I got some turkey before going to the paper.

On Monday, November 16, I spoke at Friendsville Elementary School.  I told the children that half the people of the world have to get by on $2 or less a day.  Several billion people are hoping to get one good meal a day and probably do not.

I told the students Blount County had become one of the most popular places to move to in the whole Country, and that we are blessed beyond belief to live in the United States, and they were doubly blessed to live in Blount County.

This Thanksgiving I will be blessed by spending the day with my wife, four children, three of their spouses, five grandchildren, some of my wife’s family from Franklin County, Tennessee, and two other family friends.

I hope your day will be filled with as much fun, food, noise and laughter as mine in a traditional Tennessee Thanksgiving.