The Royce Files

Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving may have failed to plumb the depths of the Great Turkey mythos. Schultz opted to explore the possibilities of how a dog would go about hosting the feast. Popcorn, jelly beans, and toast make for a less than memorable meal. The special is mostly forgettable except for Snoopy's antics preparing for the dinner.

The great turkey trotter To explain Thanksgiving to someone alien to the American (and Canadian) custom can be a bit odd since the holiday is most noted by the food. "We go to relatives and eat turkey, mash potatoes, gravy, and cranberries." "Ah....why turkey? Would not prime rib be an ideal entree?" "Turkeys are American." "So are hot dogs." "We eat those on July 4th." Menu is not prescribed for the holiday and turkey just became the de facto menu item. Although some may contend that turkey was consumed at the 1st American Thanksgiving in 1621 and so why buck the trend. I heard they also served lobster and oysters in 1621- but nobody is probably serving that to the family this Thursday. And of course we do not race turkeys. With so many early Thanksgiving morning "turkey trot" races out there somebody must believe Americans race the birds they on Thanksgiving. But I sort of like the idea. It would be kinda like ...

It being Model Railroad Month , I should write about this interest of mine. It was only in the last two years that I have come to revisit this hobby from my past. As a child I got into model railroading with an HO train set I got for Christmas. It was a special Campbell's Soup edition set made by Life-Like. Eventually a train table was built, more track, switches, and a city load of buildings were acquired. I still own it, but it has not been run for years. It was sort of an incomplete set up. I was never any good at scenic. I just liked to run the trains. I digress. A few years ago I decided to revisit the model train hobby but this time in O scale. Which now brings us to this entry about the Granite City Train Show . Out in the Go there is very little to choose from for model railroading supplies. There is one shop that carries a bit of train stuff. There used to be another but it closed up about a decade ago. I actually attend church in one of the shop's previous loc...