Thanksgiving with Other Americans

On Thanksgiving, the Ranges got on a plane and went to Chicago. We drove across the gray plains toward Wisconsin, mile after mile of road, exit, road, the soft rolling hills punctuated with the sharp edges of the harvest's skeletal remains, dried stalks jutting up into the gray sky. It was Thanksgiving day, early afternoon, and only a few cars whooshed by us. We pulled off to a rest stop to get something to eat since we hadn't eaten since morning. A few snow flakes meandered down around our scarves as we entered the only restaurant that was open: A combination Diner/Popeye's/Burger King/gas station.

And here, in the middle of America, in a gas station in the middle of the plains, were scattered couples, truckers, single women working the counter, eating their Thanksgiving meals. Music tinkled from the ceiling and the lights were cold, not the warm Thanksgiving lights of home on a snowy day, and the air was tinny and smelled of fried chicken and convenience store preservatives. Weathered men with hats and layers of flannel and corduroy and wrinkles across their brows folded into plastic booths behind plates of turkey and gravy, boiled green beans, pumpkin pie. An middle-aged couple, her black hair just set, both wearing thick-rimmed glasses, shared a piece of pie and two cups of steaming coffee. A small boy and his mother decorated the Burger King/Popeye's seating area with Christmas decorations. Two languid young men slouched behind the counter. Some looked so weary.

Popeye's fried chicken basket is...not my ideal Thanksgiving dinner. But I felt a strange sense of camaraderie with the other solitary figures in that plastic oasis, and I wondered to the point just short of getting the nerve to ask them -- Where were they going? Why were they here, of all the places to be on Thanksgiving? What did she do? Where are their children? Which truck is yours? How long is your drive? Do you want another cup of coffee?

And it felt very American, somehow, the weary, independent loneliness of Thanksgiving dinner in a truck stop, with strangers you'll probably never see again, on a holiday that is neither sacred nor profane. And I felt a heartbreaking urge to hug everyone and listen to their stories because the sum of all the lives and experiences in that room could add up to a storybook of laughter and sorrows and love and hate.... But we sat alone, with our own thoughts, taking a mealtime to nod to the holiday and our fellow travellers, and then dribbling out, speeding away and leaving that very temporary place with its oddly permanent smell of ice and plastic under the fluorescent humming of the lights.