Thanksgiving Memories

“Where are we going this Thanksgiving?” we’d ask.

“Mammam’s? Aunt Joan’s and Fah Fah’s?”

“No,” my mother tersely responded.

“It’s Umba’s turn.”

My oldest brother, Ridge—the first and most beloved grandchild in the Watson-Ridge-O’Hara-Dierks ancestral clan—was lovingly and unfortunately designated the regal bestower of the family nicknames. The word, “grandmother” in his baby gurgle resulted in “Mammam,” while “Uncle Frank” in his much adored indecipherable tongue became “Fah-Fah,” and our beautiful, vivacious and stylish Aunt Marie Belle O’Hara has forever borne the burden of the moniker, “Umba.”

If Umba conjures up an image of a through-the-nose, bone-sporting cannibal squatting by her boiling cauldron filled with screaming khaki-clad British explorers while intermittently dancing to the beat of conga drums around a flaming brushfire, your reason is correct. But you still score a C-minus. Our aunt Umba, with her very blonde mane swept up into an Eva Gabor chignon (poufed even higher with a Jolie Gabor hairpiece) is an accomplished pianist, gardener and golfer and is the polar opposite of Ridge’s babyhood label.

We loved going to the O’Haras for Thanksgiving. Their French provincial house was in a little suburb of Kansas City called “Prairie Village.” Indeed, at that time, it was on the edge of the windswept rolling prairie.

After we three boys piled out of our fake wood-paneled Ford station wagon wearing our horrid scratchy gray flannel suits and fresh from a scrappy fight in the back seat, we’d burst into Umba and Uncle Jack’s foyer.

Umba loved the Palm Beach style. She had bright lime-green bamboo wallpaper that flocked the walls. Umba would beg us to wipe off our feet before stomping all over her carved Chinese rug—dyed in pale pastels—and warned us, “careful of the chairs.” Flanking her white rococo mirror and console were two impossibly spindly French, Louis XVI fauteuil chairs whose legs had been broken and the carvings had been chipped numerous times by her boys and her nephews.

Since Umba just couldn’t bring herself to once again call in Mr. Petty, the expensive restorer, the carvings were just Scotch-taped into place. One of these chairs was famous for collapsing beneath our portly cousin, Jean, who reduced it to shards and splinters as she reeled backward in it with nothing but feet in the air and clouds of petticoats to show.

We were always scolded by mother for repeating that story.

Umba loved French antiques, no matter how rickety, and bought them from Kansas City’s only reputable dealer (at that time), Esther Bushman.

Esther’s sister, Dorothy, was the stern but proper manager of the Kansas City Country Club (and our cotillion dance teacher) and she steered the club members to her sister’s shop. Esther and her protégé, Linda Pierce, were crusty old birds who smoked unfiltered Phillip Morris, drank scotch with their eggs over easy and had voices that had met with the wrong side of a cheese grater.

The only reason prominent and famously tight-fisted “Kansas Citians” ever acquired fine antiques was due to the fact that Esther and Linda plied the husbands with bottomless glasses of scotch, and then shamed them into buying their wives a decent chest of drawers. Antique alcoholic blackmail! Apparently my uncle had succumbed to many scotches, as antiques littered their home.

Our Uncle Jack (the only in-law that escaped my brother’s naming debacle) was a local artist of deft skill. His studio was in the back of the house and we happily scrambled past the precarious antiques to his oil-paint-scented studio to glimpse the latest landscape or seascape of Ireland, the Caymans, Florida and rural Missouri.

He was extraordinarily self-effacing, always complaining that he could never get the green right or the clouds natural enough. He’d squeeze his chin forward and cock his Coke-bottle glasses, impossibly perched on the crook of his nose, as he perused his paintings, picking at various unseen painting errors.

His admiring nephews protested, “No, Uncle Jack, that looks just like the Ellis horse barn!”

Uncle Jack also had a wry sense of humor that served him well working as a humorist for Hallmark cards. When my horticulturally enthusiastic aunt came dashing into his studio one day, proclaiming, “Jack, Jack, my clivia’s in bloom,” without interrupting his steady handed brush stroke, my uncle replied, “Well then, you’d better pay a visit to your gynecologist.”

Aunt Umba had her baby blue French scenic which matched her baby blue French carpet and baby blue French chairs. My uncle’s evocative watercolor landscapes of Ireland, Nantucket and rural Kansas hung prominently as we filed into the dining room and sat down to dinner.

The aunts and grandmothers would cluck about how beautiful Grandma Haddock’s silver platters looked, how pretty her cut crystal was and then, inevitably, some disaster would occur. Though a good cook, Umba tended to be absentminded. One time my cousin ran in to show the hole she had burned through the pot that day (along with the mashed potatoes). The hole was so big you could see his entire face through it.

What would the O’Hara Thanksgiving be without at least one disaster or some wonderful holiday story? I remember one year Umba forgot to turn on the oven and we had Thanksgiving hot dogs. Another year, she cooked the turkey inside a paper bag, which was still inside a plastic bag, resulting in a severely charred turkey and creating a whole new version of blackened chicken.

Umba’s kitchen was a very effective appetite suppressant. There always seemed to be burning odors wafting through. We were encouraged not to enter this realm because one might view the aftermath of severely blackened dinner rolls thrown into the sink and dismantled ingredients deposited everywhere.

You would also find strange signs all over the kitchen, such as the one that read “Open the Garage Door!” In a rush to fetch the forgotten pecans from the hen house for Aunt Becky’s famous stuffing, it seems Umba (well known for her heavy driving foot) had floored the accelerator in reverse out of her garage one year, without opening the garage door.

However, once all the adults had been over-served by my father’s mixology skills, thoughts of culinary mishaps were quite forgotten and the jazz would start. Dad would sit down and hammer out “Blue Skies” followed by a formidable version of “Stardust.” Then he’d call Umba to come in, and depending on which serving of scotch he was on, would whoop out “Come on Sis, play Klair duh loon (a/k/a Debussy’s “Claire de Lune”).”

Umba and dad were both raised to play classical music. Dad veered into blues and jazz while Umba had developed into a sensational classic pianist, always giving impromptu concerts for her garden club ladies.

During the holidays, she would sit down at her grand piano, sweep back her Eva Gabor hairdo and begin. No matter how wild we were, we all calmed down. Even our scratchy grey flannel suits no longer caused us to fidget.

Dad looked on with pride at this sister, his eyes welling up. The rich chords of Debussy swept over our family at Thanksgiving as each of us peacefully settled into the advent of winter and thankful for another season that we could gather together.

And always with infinitely good humor, the “remains” of Umba’s Thanksgiving meal were served with a welcome round of loving appreciation.