thanksgiving the best we've ever had and i can't help thinking that what made it better was a feeling a real feeling of thankfulness and that's odd too when you consider the shape things were in when i got home from work yesterday susan were all home from school and of course mother and the baby were there as kids will buy and were living tomorrow right along with today looking forward to thanksgiving and like most men i'm glad it was mother instead of me i had to break the news but you know children we had a lot of expenses this month and your father and i thought that well the truth of the matter is there just won't be any turkey this year no thanks giving thanksgiving i don't think and it was right there that i came in right in the thick of it yes we've always had turkey just as a lot of americans have had it and will keep on having it turkey on thanksgiving is a great american tradition but what you can is are saying makes it sound as if the turkey's the only thing we had to be thankful for  dad it's not that at all i know dick with turkey is easy to lose sight of what thanksgiving really me and to think we're just making excuses because we don't have any turkey this week well we know it'll mean a lot more to it the next time we do that well sir suppose we don't have a bang up feast or still right better off in the pilgrims that's it dick and you have the kids see what dicks trying to say turkey or no turkey we've still got all the freedoms but it isn't something you can write down like well like a grocery list you've got to feel it down deep before you can really be thankful for anything i tell you what let's do a list a little more time to think this over when you get right down to it some pretty tough decisions in making up your mind what means the most to you your life that's one thing you can't get along without but do you know that there are some places in the world today where you have to get along without just about everything else and i guess i kind of got carried away but i'll bet you one thing if we really think over what we have to be thankful for when we sit down to whatever mother fix is to eat tomorrow we'll be one family in america that will really have a thanksgiving dinner well that's how it got started the johnsons didn't have any turkey and the kids no i mean everybody likes to make something special out of a special day so we fell back on something as old as the pilgrims toting up the common ordinary blessings that we had to be thankful for that night i'd see dick there building is model airplane and susan just playing on it they were just playing they were mulling things over thinking big thoughts for such young lads and as for mother and tom and baby janet and yes me too it was our places around the table and we were ready and then where we all knew it there are some things you just can't say but everybody in his own way knew what he had to be thankful for and that this was the time to think about it yes tommy thought about some of the things he ought to be glad for the time and somehow turkey and trimmings seem to matter a whole lot less than he thought they did yesterday well then it was a happy go lucky kid you'd never credit her with thinking beyond her god but she got right into the spirit of it i am thankful we have from we need to where the mother says it's hard to keep up with us we grow so fast awfully far how many clothes to take from all kinds of weather or how it would be to have to do without the right one i'm glad to be able to go to sunday school i go to any church i want any thankful for my mother and daddy that they are here with us that both of them are too worried about things to take time to f n with that i'm glad we're family that families are still important in america i guess dick being the oldest was having some pretty serious thoughts i am thankful for being able to get an education from many more schools schools chance to play betting a ball around once in a while stuff like say i'm glad it's fun growing up in america your baby janet's too young to understand the bigger thanksgiving is too little even to tell us the things that make her happy but we can tell that maybe she's thinking about them now maybe she's thinking about the fun of splashing around in the tub and about how good it feels to be clean about playtime with mother and the security she feels in mother's arms and as her mother seems she's always working cooking ironing tending children daylight to dark what does she have to be thankful for thankful that my children had the privilege of being born safely growing up healthy and strong i'm thankful that i have the privilege of guiding them  neighbor grabs in to borrow a cup of flour we've got the right to talk about anything we want to parent teacher project the new mayor our jones half and last of all america means to her family the and now for me i've got so many things to be thankful for i'm thankful for this house it may need a coat of paint it has a mortgage but it's  ours a place where we can be together in privacy and i'm thankful for the thing that makes this house our home the happiness here not just today or on christmas morning but on a day to day basis all through the year knowing that a knock on our door means nothing to fear a friend calling or maybe a bill collector or a kid selling magazines you never know what to expect but you can count on one thing it's not going to be some political gangster coming to drag one of us off to jail because we believe in freedom and i'm glad that that freedom we've got lets me choose the kind of work i like and can do best taking a sluggish motor and making it hum again makes me feel that somebody's got to his work or every had to go just because of me and feeling like that gives me a lot of satisfaction and i'm thankful for my newspaper just a few cents worth of printers ink and paper but more valuable than any amount of money because in it the editors got the privilege of printing what he thinks and i've got the privilege of agreeing with him or not however the facts strike me and both of us the editor and i have the right to act on our opinions on election day to vote for the principles we believe in and finally i'm thankful for being able to believe in spite of everything that somehow some way the unity we've got here in the johnson family will someday spread to men and nations throughout the world for