Today is Thanksgiving, the day we share turkey, dressing and pecan pie.

As I’ve done for all my adult life, I can use Thanksgiving as a time to give thanks for all the wonderful people in my life and the many blessings I’ve been fortunate to receive.

This Thanksgiving, I’m going to turn the sentiments around. It’s time to stop focusing on my blessings and thank people who seldom get the thanks for what they do day in and day out.

Your neighbors. I’ve got great neighbors.

They check on my dog if it’s raining and always have a smile for us.

They’ve saved us when a water pipe broke, checked on our house when the alarm went off unexpectedly and will bring the empty trash cans and recycling bins up to our house when they know my husband’s out of town.

I need to thank them with a personal visit, not a text, and express how important they are to our whole block.

The grocery-store baggers. In the old days, sackers would bag up your groceries, load them in a cart and help you put the bags in your car. We’d tip them and everybody won.

For those of us who still physically shop in the grocery store, the baggers do the job but don’t get the tip.

Thank them for bagging your groceries. Make some small talk with them. You’re already standing there so why not acknowledge the person separating your eggs from the bread.

The librarians. I love the library. When I was a young girl, the library was my favorite place in the world.

I was in love with the wonderful smell of old books and bindings, the towering bookshelves and the thousands of books that allowed me to learn, relax and visit people and places from all time periods.

Librarians do a lot more than check out books. They shelve books we leave on tables, read voraciously, create seasonal displays and encourage children to become life-long readers.

I haven’t thanked them for their knowledge and willingness to recommend books to library patrons. They deserve thanks for keeping the library one of the last quiet sanctuaries in the world.

Behind-the-counter workers. People feel workers at the fast-food joint or the corner store already get paid so why thank them.

It’s their job, after all, to take our money, bag up our purchases and do everything fast and efficiently.

You are correct. But you could smile and thank them.. Look at life from their point of view. People are surly, grouchy and in a hurry. They stand there for over eight hours and have to smile at customers they probably want to punch in the face.

The mail carriers. Email and text messaging has replaced birthday cards and letters we put in an envelope and mail.

But there’s hundreds of postal workers who still put your mail in the right slot or box every single day, and we don’t even know what those people look like.

No matter how paperless we’re becoming, the U.S. Post Office is still delivering mail to you, whether that’s junk flyers or your paper copies of your credit-card statements.

Tape a note to your mailbox thanking your carrier for delivering your mail and your packages.

Our readers. I want to thank you for taking time to read my musings all these years, both in print and online.

If you’re a subscriber, thank you for supporting your local, home-town newspaper and the folks who deliver the paper to your driveway every day.

From my heart, thank you for giving me your time and allowing me to share my thoughts with you every week.

To as you ponder all of life’s blessings, consider those who seldom get thanked and make sure they know you appreciate them.

It’s a great way to start the Yuletide holiday season.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

There are silent, quick moments that jump out of my childhood. Not just the big ones like moving to Louisiana, getting a new sibling or when my dad’s toupee came in the mail.

Snapshots of ordinary days that, for some reason, cling to the top of my memory bank.

I’m the eldest of seven children. We’re stair-steppers – two years separates most of us, and we grew up sharing a lot of the same likes and dislikes.

Our parents taught us to stand up for each other, and even during our worst arguments, we stuck together.

One afternoon, my brother came home and said a kid down the street was picking on him. The four eldest children in the family – Jimmy, Johnny, Diane and I – immediately jumped up off the couch and walked down the middle of Evans Drive, our shoulders touching, looking for that kid.

We felt invincible alone but, together, we were more powerful than the Fantastic Four.

That afternoon was over 50 years ago, and we’ve all grown older since that summer in Baker Estates. As the eldest, the aches and pains should start with me, but we’ve all shared taking turns at the front of the gray-haired line.

My brother, Jimmy, was born a year and five days after me. We’ve always been close and he has a sixth sense when I need to talk to him.

He’s been an outstanding dentist all his adult life, and, as a result of craning to look into people’s mouths, developed arthritis in his neck a few years ago.

I didn’t realize how much the pain bothered him until I watched him complete a few chores at his house. He held his neck in a stiff manner, and it was obvious he didn’t feel great. But he’s not one to complain, in fact, none of us whine about the way Father Time is marching up and down our bodies.

That march is subtle at times – all of us wear reading glasses, and there’s a lot more gray in beards and hairdos than there used to be.

Almost all of us walk with a slight limp, thanks to a gift from the gene pool of having bad backs and sciatic trouble.

The youngest two in our family – Jeff and Donna – are still spry and healthy, and I wonder if they look at their older siblings like people look at flashing caution lights.

Time, however, keeps moving on, and there’s no way to stop the progression of wear and tear on our bodies.

This week, sister Diane had double knee replacement following years of painful walking. She was a runner in her youth, which didn’t help with the gene pool gift of rubbery knees, and she also spent years on the soccer field sidelines taking pictures.

But Diane’s one of the toughest and most determined women I’ve ever met, and she told me she’s going to do everything the doctors tell her to do to recuperate.

She’s following our mom’s lead. When Mom had knee replacement surgery a few years ago, she was walking down the halls the next day and completed all the rehabilitation exercises the doctor ordered.

All this at the age of 80.

Diane says if Mom can do it, so can she.

It’s in the genes. It’s in that mental snapshot I have of my grandfather walking to and from work every day following a massive heart attack, my Grandma Marguerite losing weight without complaining when she found out she had diabetes and my dad letting his granddaughter decorate his electric scooter when he didn’t have enough oxygen to walk.

Those memory snapshots seem like they happened yesterday. And perhaps that’s how life progresses – a series of memories that when strung together, convince us to be stronger than we believed we could be.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

We got some skills.

That’s what I believe most teenagers are thinking when confronted with an adult who starts every sentence with “Back when I was your age…”

Most of us who sing the entire theme song to “Gilligan’s Island and “The Beverly Hillbillies” believe we have the upper hand with these youngsters.

We got some skills too. We can drive a stick shift, we know how to change the oil in our cars and we know how to use a rotary phone.

But today’s teens have skills we will never master.

They can read what’s on their cell phone while walking down the street, all the while avoiding potholes, little dogs and other people.

When I walk through the mall, I bump into other people every 10 steps and I’m not even looking at a cell phone screen.

Not today’s teens. They have a sixth sense about who’s around them even when they don’t seem to be paying attention.

They can text blindfolded. I’ve seen teenagers put their hands in the front pocket of their hoodie and text someone nonstop while looking me in the eye and without once looking at the front of the cell phone.

I’m still trying to master text messaging. When I try and hit the comma, most of the time I accidentally hit the GIF button and all kinds of stupid emojis pop up on the screen.

I don’t have a clue how to use an emoji in a text message. That’s not a skill most of the people my age have mastered.

These teens find dozens of new artists within days of their releasing a song on the Internet. Back in the day – yes, cue the “Old Geezer” music – we had to wait for Dick Clark to play the song on “American Bandstand” and see what score the teen judges gave the tune.

We’d wait patiently for new artists to find their way on Kasey Kasem’s “America’s Top 40” radio program and hope the ones we liked inched their way from #39 to #1.

The internet, most notably Instagram and Snapchat, make instant stars out of the most obscure musicians who have some incredible music. And, let’s face it, those of us who loved the Dave Clark Five are still trying to figure out the difference between Instagram and Snapchat.

Today’s teens do not know how to use the card catalog at the library. They haven’t a clue what an encyclopedia is and if we mention the word “Childcraft” to them, they think it’s a new installment in the Harry Potter series.

But they can find information, cross check it, watch a video about the event and see pictures in minutes.

They don’t need to memorize history – it’s at their fingertips, and they can be up to date on everything from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Donald Trump faster than we can say Dewey Decimal System.

Young people can order dinner from their phone, have their meal delivered to wherever they’re standing and then pay for it with a credit card on their phone. If we were hungry, we scrounged around in the pantry for some stale Wonder Bread, jelly and peanut butter.

To have the ability and the skill to order Chinese food, a pizza or a Santa Fe salad and have it in your hands in less than an hour is something we might’ve seen on “The Twilight Zone.”

So before we bash this young generation, let’s give them some snaps for having some pretty incredible skills.

Because back when I was their age… never mind.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

The Internet is filled with slide shows and quizzes about the dozens of gadgets the younger generation will never know or remember.

I recognize every single thing.

I  know what a floppy disc was used for, I still remember waiting for the neighbor to get off the telephone party line so I could talk to my friend and I remember when there were only three television channels.

What brought that realization home was when a young person told me she couldn’t find her way because Google Maps was down.

Her friend had a hard time telling her how to get from Point A to Point B because she also relied on Google Maps for directions.

When we first moved to Fort Bend County almost 25 years ago, a friend gave me directions to Needville High School.

“Drive south on Highway 36. Turn left at the light,” he said.

“What light?” I asked.

“The light,” he replied.

So in keeping with accepting I’ll never understand video games or digital downloads, here’s a few of my observations about what the younger generation will never experience.

Home-fried chicken. I remember my mom putting a few cups of flour in a paper bag. She’d then season the raw chicken with Tony Chachere’s, add the chicken pieces to the bag and shake it. As kids, we took turns shaking the bag and then peeking in to make sure all the chicken was coated with flour.

The smell of that fried chicken was heavenly, and even better was the crispy skin on the outside. My arteries are cringing at the memory, but this new generation will never know the steps required to make really great home-fried chicken.

A real fireplace. We have a fireplace in our house. It has real gas flames. We flip a switch and the flames instantly start dancing behind a pane of glass.

Few youngsters will experience what it’s like to get firewood from an outside stack of logs – always on the lookout for scorpions, spiders and snakes. There’s an art to rolling up newspaper and tiny twigs to get the fire started.

Adding logs to the fire takes care because, too many, and the fire takes a long time to get back up to the place where you can hear the crackle and pop of the burning wood. The smell is heavenly as well and one does not experience that from the image of a fire on the television.

The family portrait used to hang over the mantle. Most of the time, it was a picture taken at church, courtesy of Olan Mills Portrait Studio. Now, there’s a flat-screen TV over the fireplace, and the family portrait is on somebody’s phone.

Home-made bread. There are still some who go to all the trouble of making bread. The last time I did that, one loaf cost me about five dollars, was as heavy as a brick and the kids wanted to know why I didn’t buy a loaf of pre-sliced Sunbeam bread.

I wondered myself.

The closest I come now to making my own bread is cracking open a can of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and serving them hot out of the oven.

There are some antiquated things this younger generation will never have to experience – waiting 10 minutes for the television or radio to warm up, not having anything to do on a sleepless night because the television stations all signed off at midnight and remembering telephone numbers.

Talking about fried chicken and home-made bread has made me hungry. Maybe I’ll look up those recipes in my dog-eared and well-used “River Roads” cookbook because I still know what a genuine plastic spiral-bound cookbook is used for.

As our country folk might say, I’ve got a hankerin’ for something good.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.