Hello America! It’s me, Thanksgiving, a day to remember a time when the Pilgrims and Native Americans shared food.

We know that story has been embellished over the years but celebrating that special turkey dinner is now a 200-year tradition.

Sadly, I feel I’m in the shadow of my older, more popular sibling, Christmas.

The reasons are understandable. Last year, Covid robbed people of getting together at the biggest family celebration of the year, so people are anxious to put up Christmas trees and holiday lights.

Most of all, Christmas offers presents.

But I have a lot to offer you!

First, the food is outstanding on Thanksgiving. Turkeys are the main attraction, and they bring along their two favorite buddies – gravy and bread stuffing, or dressing as Southerners like to say.

In fact, people have taken this side dish to a culinary level unimaginable 200 years ago.

There’s oyster dressing, cornbread dressing, bread dressing, sausage dressing and even vegan dressing. People put everything in dressing from walnuts to pecans to cranberries. And dressing isn’t complete without its favorite companion, mashed potatoes.

Today’s the day when you can eat marshmallows as a main dish without any guilt. Any other day, you might feel a tad embarrassed to slather roasted marshmallows on a pan of sweet potatoes, but not today.

And desserts! Let’s examine those for a second. There’s pecan and apple pie and both bring along their favorite companion, a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

But the star of the dessert table is pumpkin pie. Nothing beats a slice of creamy, orange pumpkin pie with a big dollop of whipped cream on top.

I’ve seen pumpkin in coffee, candy and tea. There’s pumpkin vodka, ice cream, cookies, candles, room spray and car fresheners. You can thank me, Thanksgiving, for bringing pumpkin to your attention.

In all honesty, I’m not a fan of some of the side dishes. Green-bean casserole is one of them. At no other time of the year would you take two cans of green beans, drown them in cream-of-mushroom soup, dump an entire can of fried onion rings on top and serve that as a nutritious side dish.

Same goes with ambrosia. Mixing together coconut, pineapple, mandarin oranges, cherries and whipped cream and calling that a healthy side dish is stretching things a bit, don’t you think?

But they’re both yummy and a Thanksgiving tradition.

Thanksgiving isn’t complete without the smell of fresh, hot rolls. I know it’s tough to find time to mix yeast, flour and water to make home-made rolls the size of a softball, so it’s okay to open a box of pre-made rolls and stick them in the oven for 7 minutes. The smell’s still the same and you need something to sop up all that gravy.

And let’s not forget the decorations! Most of you can remember being in the school Thanksgiving play and either wearing a pilgrim hat or a headband with feathers. You can thank me for that memory.

If you have children, chances are good they drew at least one turkey using their hand as the template and you’re still displaying that on my day.

Just remember, without me, you wouldn’t have pumpkin pie, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and three, count ‘em three, NFL football games in one day.

But who am I kidding. Christmas is the big dog in this winter holiday fight. All I’m asking for is a smidge of respect, America.

So when you’re eating that turkey sandwich on Friday, turkey gumbo on Saturday, turkey quesadillas on Sunday and another turkey sandwich on Monday, you can thank me.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

I particularly dislike – okay hate – call routing. That’s the official name for when someone calls a phone number and an automated system sends callers to the right extension.

In theory, it’s supposed to save time.

In theory, it’s supposed to be more efficient.

In reality, call routing is frustrating for the customer and a waste of positive customer relations for the company.

Recently, I needed to make a dental appointment. Our former dentist sold his practice, so I was looking around for someone new closer to home.

A friend recommended her dentist. I called the number and got this familiar message:  “Please listen carefully as many of our options have changed.”

I’ve never understood this warning.

Few people memorize call options. This office has already wasted time with options I never realized I had.

Usually one of the “press this number” options is where I want to go. In the dental office, making an appointment was one of the last choices after I heard about all the services this dental office provides.

Pressing the number for appointments gave me the lovely opportunity to choose again from a new set of choices. I kept pressing zero until the system decided I was probably an idiot and passed me on to a real person who scheduled my appointment.

I’ve gotten so frustrated with call routing that when I have the option to say something, I yell all kinds of names to get a real person – “manager, operator, human!”

If that doesn’t work, I press zero repeatedly, hoping the system will malfunction and connect me with a human.

Sometimes this works.

But the caller never wins because that human says they’ll connect me with someone who call help me. You guessed it – I’m back in the call routing line.

The call routing people are crafty. Not only are you stuck on hold, they make you listen to advertisements for their company.

“If you’re interested in our low-interest credit card, stay on the line…”

“If you’d like to speak to an associate about trade-ins, stay on the line…”

“If you’d like to speak to a real person, you’re out of luck. That’s not one of our options.”

Last week, I called a doctor’s office for my mom. These people took the prize for the most convoluted call routing I’ve ever experienced.

First I had to choose if I wanted to talk to a doctor, wanted information about their new procedure – that was a 30-second sales talk – or billing. If I was experiencing a medical emergency, I was supposed to call 911.

I wondered how many people call the doctor’s office while they’re having a heart attack and stay on the line, waiting for the right number to press.

For heart patients, dial two. For test results, press three. For the cardiology lab, press four. Doctors should press six, and pharmacies seven. There wasn’t an option for appointments, so I listened again.

I tried to sneak through and pressed six. That took me back to the main menu.

I guess the call routing geniuses figured out a real doctor would have a secret number to call and not get stuck in the call routing line.

Hanging up, I called back and didn’t press any buttons, hoping the system would connect me with a real person.

That resulted in getting me disconnected.

By the time I got through the call routing routine and a no-nonsense switchboard operator came on the line, it was 4:01 p.m. She said the doctor’s office closed at 4 p.m. and to call back tomorrow. My frustration level was off the chart at that point.

Not all phone calls are best handled by a computer or machine. Sometimes, that gold ole human touch is what’s best for business.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

For the first time in years, I was taking an airplane trip by myself.

No friend to help me navigate crowded concourses.

No husband to blindly follow. I was flying the post-Covid-era skies all by myself.

The voice inside my head talked out of both sides of her mouth.

“Stop being a whiny-baby,” was one. This voice was the strong side, the one who believed I could not only navigate the airport but easily sail through the TSA screening line and baggage pick up.

This voice reassured me I could probably put the plane on auto pilot at 30,000 feet and make small talk with passengers as I passed out coffee and peanuts.

Then there was the other voice.

“You. Cannot. Do. This. Alone.”

This sneaky voice told me I’d forget something at the security check point.

The voice said I was going to miss my connection because I couldn’t maneuver the Atlanta airport all by myself.

This voice said I’d never remember my gate numbers, even though both the boarding passes and seat numbers were on my phone and written in the notebook I had in my purse.

Then the voice whispered “What if your phone dies? What if you lose your purse? What if you lose your wallet with all your identification and your credit card?” This voice had the “what ifs” down to a crippling science.

The whiny voice had an ally. My connecting flight in Atlanta to Greensboro, N.C. was a tight fit.

When I made the connection, I was a little concerned, but it was the last flight out of Atlanta to Greensboro.

I was determined to watch our grandchildren play in their soccer game that morning. So I rolled the dice, hoping the flight from Houston would arrive in Atlanta on time.

While waiting to board the plane to Atlanta, I was chatting with a pilot. I asked him about connections in Atlanta since that was his home base.

“I tell people if they don’t have an hour and a half in Atlanta, they’ll never make their connection,” he said.

I had 50 minutes.

The whiny voice practically smiled.

I thought about having to spend the night in Atlanta. The whiny voice told me there wouldn’t be a room available since the World Series games were in Atlanta that night. The voice told me I could try sleeping on the floor, but I’d probably get mugged.

I texted my youngest sister in North Carolina and told her I’d call if I missed my flight, which was probably a safe bet to make. She texted me back:  “If you run into a glitch, you are a smart, capable woman and you will figure it out!”

The relief I felt was instantaneous.

My strong voice took center stage. She reminded me of the many times I’d stepped up in tough situations and figured it out. The results weren’t always pretty, but I’d always come up with a solution.

I’ll always struggle with the two voices in my head. Sometimes that whiny voice will be louder, the one that’ll cause me to doubt my decisions and every choice I’ve made.

But then I’m going to remember – I made that connection in Atlanta. True, the flight attendant closed the main doors behind me when I got on the plane to Greensboro, sweating after riding the train from literally one end of the airport to the other and running for the gate, hauling my suitcase and a heavy backpack.

I didn’t lose my phone or my boarding passes. I’d made the trip home without any worries because I listened to my strong voice.

I’d still rather have my husband with me on my travels and I’ll probably be happier if my future flights are non-stop.

But just in case my phone dies, I lose my purse or there is a tight connecting flight, I’ll listen to my strong self.

She not only believes I could figure out a solution, but I could also step into the cockpit and land that plane with my eyes closed.

She just might be right.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

There are songs that, when you hear them, cause you to stop in your tracks, close your eyes and become one with the music.

“Black Velvet” by Alannah Myles is that song for me. The song, released in 1990, was written by Canadian songwriters Christopher Ward and David Tyson.

One afternoon, “Black Velvet” came on the radio when I was in the car with my eldest grandson. I immediately turned up the volume and started tapping on the steering wheel with the beat.

He looked at me, questions in his eyes.

“This song is about Elvis Presley,” I told him.

A blank stare.

“People used to paint his likeness on black velvet,” I said.

Still a blank stare.

“What’s black velvet?” he asked. “And who’s Elvis Presley?”

How do I explain the impact the Elvis Aaron Presley had on an entire generation? How do I sufficiently explain the effect this sexy country boy from Mississippi had on the rock and roll scene back in the day?

Elvis was a little before my time but there’s no denying his explosion on the entertainment scene changed music. There were talented Black artists who wrote and sang these rock-and-roll songs before Elvis. This Mississippi singer had the opportunity to make it on the national stage.

Songs like “Nothing like a Hound Dog,” “Love Me Tender,” and “Jailhouse Rock” might seem old-fashioned these days, but when they hit the airwaves, they were like a seismic jolt.

My mom said the heart throbs for her generation were Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in their tuxedos and smooth voices. When Elvis showed up in jeans and a slicked back, black pompadour, the girls went crazy.

When he shook those hips on the Ed Sullivan show, the network refused to let him be filmed from the waist down.

The first time I heard “Black Velvet,” I didn’t know what the song was about. Then one day I saw a black-velvet painting with Elvis’s likeness in an antique store.

That’s when I knew – people loved this man so much, they’d paint his likeness on one of the most luxurious fabrics in the world. Velvet suits Elvis’s voice perfectly. That Mississippi twang was a totally Southern voice, dripping with sugar, a little bit of whiskey thrown in for effect.

“Black Velvet’s” lyrics sum up Presley’s presence. Elvis did have that “little boy smile,” and he did establish a new religion – rock and roll that brought a whole generation to their knees. His songs were raw, full of emotion and light years away from any of 1950s tunes.

He reinvented himself in Las Vegas in the late 60s and early 70s, where his sold-out shows brought in over 2.5 million fans. His private retreat, Graceland, brought in over half a million visitors yearly before Covid. The only other house to see more visitors is the White House.

As the song says, Elvis was gone too soon. He died on Aug. 16, 1977 at the age of 42. He was in the midst of another comeback, having switched from jeans to white, jewel-studded jumpsuits.

His fans still grieve for him, whether they remember him from his go-go movie “Viva Las Vegas” to his surfer flick “Blue Hawaii.” Some might remember a trim, black-leather clad King still sporting his signature lip curl, long sideburns and growly voice.

Still others picture Elvis performing in Las Vegas, overweight and bloated, but where the women still screamed his name. Still others will remember Elvis whenever they see his likeness painted on black velvet.

There’ll never be another one like The King.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.