So me and my buddy John decided to go to the Thanksgiving dinner downtown at the Convention Center, being the lonely solo acts that we are with nothing else to do for Thanksgiving. That’s kind of what it’s for, I guess, the Street People show up, families, all kinds of people, 25,000 of them according to the official website. That’s like a football game almost.
Actually, Thanksgiving is in the tradition of the ancient Savory Feast of Autumn - when all the crops are in and before the cold winds blow. Gathering together and eating in celebration of community and communion. It started way before the pilgrims. It goes back millennia. One last chance to get together and feel good about life. Well except for Christmas.
Here in San Antonio, the Raul Jimenez Thanksgiving Dinner has been going on for 45 years. Supported by a wide coalition of sponsors (including Walmarts and Starbucks and Coca-Cola) and volunteers (4,000 of them, including students from local schools who make place mats for the tables) and the city of San Antonio who donates the Henry B. González Convention Center. It’s a big deal alright and right downtown. And it’s free. Even the city buses are free if you’re going to the Thanksgiving.
City buses are a trip. You can talk to all kinds of people on the bus. I hadn’t been on a city bus in years but John mentored me on the protocol and procedures and we climbed aboard old number 4 when it arrived and rode it downtown. It seemed like everyone on the bus was all going to the same place - downtown for Thanksgiving and everyone was in a thanksgiving kind of mood. People were talking and laughing. We made room for the new riders when they came aboard.
Finally, after a high speed jaunt thru the bumpy downtown streets, the bus stopped and left us off near the entrance to the Convention Center. We walked in and let me tell you something, it’s like going thru a portal into another dimension. That place is huge. There are dozens of doors right there along the Market Street entrance and once you’re inside those dozens of doors there are more dozens of doors that open into the inner sanctum which is even huger. It’s mammoth and this is where the people were gathered, by the hundreds, if not thousands, around tables laid out in a giant grid, with avenues or streets in between.
It was a humble crowd, it seemed to me and so were the people serving the meals. They brought it right to our table, wherever we found a place to sit down, and made us feel welcome. Just raise your hand and wave it around.
At the front and center of the whole thing a stage was set up and a band was playing conjunto music. People whirling and dancing around, doing the cumbia.
Pancho Claus was walking around blessing the people. El Rey Feo was working the crowd, with his crown. We have all gathered for Thanksgiving. Some kind of a celebration. That’s what I felt.
Just the other day my friend was telling me her story of a day in her life once long ago when she had a remarkable experience. She got up and practiced meditation, as was her habit. Then she realized that she had nothing to do, no agenda items pending, so she sat down and meditated some more. She got up and had lunch, made her bed and realized that she still had nothing to do so she sat down and meditated again. Later that day, as she was driving her car thru Brackenridge Park she noticed that she could see only the good in each person she encountered. It was so remarkable that she still remembers it years later.
It was a lovely story and that’s the way it was at the Thanksgiving Day Feast at the Convention Center. It’s like people were only seeing the good in each other. Or atleast that’s how it seemed to me.
Maybe that’s what Thanksgiving Day is all about: being kind and seeing the best in each other. Wishing each other a Happy Thanksgiving. On the bus it was easy to do. We were all together with a common destination. I said Happy Thanksgiving several times.
Happy Thanksgiving to you.
music from All India Radio / thank you again
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