How did your family celebrate Thanksgiving?
We celebrated Thanksgiving pretty much like everyone else in North America does. We roasted a turkey, made several pies and potatoes and gravy. As a young child and teenager growing up, Thanksgiving and Christmas were pretty much the only days that I could eat until I truly felt full and I loved it. We would then sit around all day and be lazy until we felt we’d digested enough food that we could have left overs.
We didn’t have any specific activities that were associated with Thanksgiving, just family and food. Sometimes grandpa and grandma Leavitt would be there and sometimes they wouldn’t. I seem to remember that on occasion we’d have Thanksgiving dinner at and some Aunt & Uncle’s house but it was usually at our own house.
What are some of the things your family would to celebrate Christmas?
Christmas was pretty much another Thanksgiving with huge turkey dinners, but now we’d have a couple of weeks off school. As a younger child we’d play in the snow with friends building snow forts and caves and a ton of other fun things.
The family all got together and we opened presents in the morning and we ate a lot of food. One tradition that I have very fond memories of are the nuts.
Beginning around December first mom would put out a couple of bowls of mixed nuts and a nut cracker. These were generally a mix of Brazil nuts, Walnuts, Almonds, Hazel nuts and sometimes Pecans. She would let me eat all the nuts I wanted and I lovd mixed nuts. The only requirement she had was that I had to crack her a brazil nut every once in a while. I was happy to do it. It was always my goal to break out the brazil nut in one piece. I got pretty good at it.
Mom would always buy a box of mandrin oranges that we loved. For some reason we called them Japanese oranges
Our tree was always decorated with no theme in mind and lots of tinsel. I would say about half of the ornaments were ones that us kids had made in school or church. We had a single string of out door lights on the house but no other decorations outside.
As we got older and could drive we would often go skiing either at Fernie or Banff.
What are your siblings names and how much older/younger are they?
Alfred Gregory Leavitt February 6, 1950
Fara Rose Leavitt June 2, 1951
Dixie Marie Leavitt September 20, 1953
Jackie Marlene Leavitt February 24, 1955
Frederick Arlen Leavitt August 12, 1958
Lester James Leavitt October 29, 1959
I knew that we were all born pretty close together but looking at that list, my mom had a baby pretty much every year in the 1950’s. Her only real break was between Jackie and I.
Share one memory of each of your siblings.
Wow, I don’t know if I can do this. Oh well, here goes.
For a while, after he was married, Greg and Gaylia lived in Lethbridge and he worked at a sports store. Some how he got a gig teaching cross country ski lessons. He offered Lester and I jobs to help him teach. I knew nothing about cross country skiing (but neither did Greg) so we got together one weekend and he taught us all how to put a pine tar base on our skis, how to wax them for different types of snow and how to actually ski. We then taught this class for several weekends. It was a wonderful time. After that we used to go cross country skiing all the time. Even Dad and Ross and Jackie got into it.
Fara was always the calm and peaceful one. I could talk to her quite easily about anything. She was a lot like me in that she was shy and reserved and not very popular and she never really had any boyfriends. I do remember one time that she had a boyfriend one summer in Waterton and he drove a convertible. They took Lester and I for a ride in his convertible and we would sit up on the back of the back seats (this was before seatbelts) and we would enjoy the wind in our hair (this was when I still had hair).
My most vivid memory of Dixie was one time at dinner I was doing something that got Dixie mad at me. I don’t remember what it was but it escalated to the point that she chased me. I ran as fast as I could, but Dixie has very long legs and was gaining on me. I knew if I didn’t do something that I was in for some real pain. I remembered that the back ally behind the motel had a gravel road with chipped gravel on it. Not just regular gravel but broken rocks with sharp edges. Dixie was in bare feet and I was sure she wouldn’t be able to run on the gravel. Well she rain on the gravel just fine but at one point I veered off of the road and under a close line in a neighbors backyard. In addition to long legs Dixie was also six feet tall and the close line caught her around the neck and saved my life.
I have more memories of Jackie because she was the closest sister to my age. Jackie is the one who introduced me to William Shatner and she also took me on adventures with her boyfriends. As an adult, Jackie lived in Cardston so when we made trips with my young family back to Cardston, we often stayed at her house. Jackie is also the one who would lay my head in her lap and put makeup on my face. I’m prety sure it was with Jackie and her boyfriend at the time that we would climb in the back of his pickup truck and go hunt bears with a massive flashlight that plugged into his cigarette lighter.
I could write a book on some of the adventures that Lester and I did. Just to pick one randomly, in Waterton near the lake and adjacent to the hiking trail to Bertha Falls was an amphitheater where rangers would give a presentation on the park every night during the summer. Lester and I thought we were pretty sneaky and we would crawl through the brush and “spy” on the park ranger and all the tourists. One night when we thought we safely hidden away in the brush, the ranger stopped talking and pointed in our direction and told the audience, “now don’t anyone panic or do anything sudden, but I think there is a bear in the brush over there”. My heart did a double take because I thought there was a bear behind us but then I realized that he thought we were the bear.
--------------------trivia--------------------
The world's largest living organism is one huge mushroom
that lives underground somewhere in North America.
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