Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

Spent most of today doing chores. In fact, I didn't even get half the chores done today that I wanted to. I only got to cleaning the bathroom while the laundry was in the dryer. I'd wanted to get at least the bathroom and the kitchen done today. I bought a few things at Super Fresh and Dollar Tree...and of course, forgot the reason I went to Dollar Tree, which was for a shower curtain. I put together the home-made pumpkin bread tonight before dinner. I hope no one in Erma minds that it's a little flat. I'll do the Cinnamon Swirl Bread tomorrow evening, after work.

Also did the last episode of Centennial today I'm going to watch for the time being. While The Winds of Death, on the Depression in the West, was one of the best acted and written episodes, it's not one I'm going to repeat unless I watch the entire series straight through again. The tale is a sad and, ultimately, tragic one. The scheming Wendalls encourage families to come north and start farms on arid land, using a method of farming that strips the topsoil, allowing wheat to grow. Old hands at Centennial like Hans Brumbaum know it's a bad idea, but all the new farmers see is cheap land and their good fortune...until the dust storms that plagued the Mid-West and West in the 1920s and 30s begin. The farmers find themselves unable to pay for their land and homes. The ranchers are attacked when smarty-pants breeders create a new strain of smaller bull that look nice but can't withstand the arid country. And the Mexicans who work in the larger farms want more rights and respect from the prejudiced townspeople.

I still don't know what happened to the cowboys (I imagine that breed "pretty bull" probably succumbed to disease and wiped them out), but while the Mexican story came out all right in the end...the Dust Bowl farmers, in Centennial and in real life, lost everything. The ending looked more like Rosemary's Baby than The Waltons, and it's been haunting me all day. I hope it doesn't give me nightmares.

The Bonanza episodes were more pleasant, while still giving me things to think about. I know even less about Bonanza than I do about The Wild Wild West, other than it involved a man and his sons who owned a ranch, it ran forever in the 60s, and it gave Michael Landon his start. I especially liked "The Medal," featuring a very young Dean Stockwell of Quantam Leap as a drunken man who was once a reluctant Civil War hero.