Howdy Holidays to you.

 

I was talking with a friend this morning who had just barely made a few minutes of my recent Thanksgiving Concert. She said, “I had not been in a holiday mood and you were telling your Thanksgiving story about the rolls in the car — it helped me feel a little more festive.”

 

That made me just as happy as if she’d said my songs had lifted her mood. It’s all the same thing, songs, stories, laughter. I was telling about the Thanksgiving of 1983 where thousands lost electricity in Seattle because of an ice storm. A large group of vagabonds gathered at a house near Greenlake to bring whatever we had that could be cooked on a Coleman Campstove. At one point I took a walk around the neighborhood and found a pickup truck running with dinner rolls in aluminum foil pressed up against the hot manifold. When I got back around the block I could smell some of the rolls were burning. There was no way to know, in that dense neighborhood, who had forgotten their rolls under the hood of a running truck. I looked around, then lifted an edge of the foil and removed a couple of the still-good rolls and walked around the block again, enjoying them. Ummmm. 

 

At the end of the day I’d played the few remaining people my song, Run Like the River Runs, around the fireplace. It was the debut of that song. When I stepped outside to go home, the world was frozen even harder. Icicles were like daggers off the roof. I walked down the icy street to my car and when I saw that pickup hood, stopped in my tracks. “Damn! He ran out of gas and completely burned the rolls!” I had wondered if that might happen. 

 

The short version is that I instantly knew what I was going to do. Across Greenlake I saw lights reflecting and knew there were some businesses there who had finally gotten power again. I drove my reluctant, deeply frozen Rambler station wagon around the far end of the lake — even though my home was in another direction. About twenty minutes later I returned to the same street and pulled alongside the pickup. I wrote a little note on a scrap of paper bag:

 

“Hello! A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you. Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m sitting out here in the frozen darkness, warming up my car, while you’re deep asleep. By the time you read this, I’m sure you will have realized what you did and that your dinner rolls were a disaster. I’m sorry about that - manifold cooking is a delicate affair. 

 

Anyhow, I thought I should let you know that those yeasty buns did not all go completely to waste. Thanksgiving afternoon, when I saw that some of them had already been charred, I made an executive decision and wolfed down some of them before you let the rest burn to smithereens. Thank God I rescued a few. They were better than you can imagine, but I guess you don’t necessarily want me to go into that.

 

Also, you probably don’t want any money for them, but I do feel that I owe you something, so I’m leaving you a gift that will undoubtedly improve your morning. I might even be saving your marriage by disposing of the charred remains so that your wife won’t be reminded that you never did bring in the dinner rolls.

 

Don’t worry about the jug, I have others. I hope you had a mighty fine Thanksgiving, even without them rolls.

 

                     A Finger-lickin’ Stranger

 

P. S. If those rolls were homemade, would you mind leaving the recipe under a rock on the curb? 

 

I read the note once-over and laughed, my laughter a soft chuckle in the frozen night. Then got out of my car and opened my trunk and pulled out a plastic gasoline can full of high-quality 7-11 fuel. I carried it over to the pickup, then sat the gas can in the snow next to the front tire and slipped the note under the wiper. It was a pretty decent Thanksgiving present, I thought.

 

~~~ So see what happened? Telling that story after singing my song, Run Like the River Runs, caused my little-bit-sad friend to feel like she could see a few sparks of Joy and Kindness and Holiday Spirit after all. Sometimes it’s just a laugh or one kind gesture away. I wish plenty of both for you.

 

—   —   —   —   —   —   —   —

 

In case you’re never heard mention of them, I have two Holiday Albums I created over two Christmas Seasons, 2017 and 2018. They are as home grown as music can be. Sitting in my bedroom recording into my laptop for several weeks each year. Mixing and engineering them as best I could and then being surprised to find out what charming, friendly reminders they are of Joy in the World. In between some of the songs are audio landscapes of people walking in the snow, pausing in the woods to listen to snow geese overhead, the jingle of horse drawn sleighs and kids throwing snowballs. 

 

I wanted to give listeners something home made and genuine. Each album, Songs of the Season and Winter Tales, have thirteen songs. About half the songs are originals I created for that purpose, and about half are re-imagined versions of songs you’ve probably known your whole life. I took a lot of freedom and made them how they ought to have been in the first place. 

 

A huge part of the charm is that while they are Holiday albums, they are also celebrations of seasons, autumn into winter, Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year and any other Holy Days of Love you can find this time of year. 

 

Quite a few people have told me that these albums are the first Holiday albums they’ve ever kept playing for months after Christmas. I get it. That first year I found out I had to move because the house I was renting was sold. Those songs were like my good friends, guiding me to the next place I would live and helping me to feel taken care of along the way. 

 

You can find both of these albums only here on my website. I didn’t send them to the streaming sites or any stores. Sort of boutique releases, only available through me. Order downloads or the CD. Downloads come free with CD purchase if you like. Click here for more info and to purchase.

 

I wish for you a loving, grateful season my friends, 

 

Michael Tomlinson