Spent the rest of the morning working on something I've been wanting to do for almost two weeks. I bought two containers of fresh cranberries from the farm market, but haven't had the time to make them into cranberry sauce. Finally did that this morning. I think I either didn't mash them enough, didn't boil them enough, or overdid the water, because they did not thicken. I just let the sauce cool in the hope it would thicken before running off to the Thomas Sharp School.
It had rained off and on all morning. Though it wasn't raining by the time I rode there and looked like it hadn't rained in a few hours, the playground was still pretty wet. There was no thought of taking the little kids out today. After I ate lunch with them, we took them to the library to hear What Was I Scared Of?, Room On the Broom, and the Piggie and Elephant story The Thank You Book. They were rowdy, spending more time messing around with the chairs than listening...but to be fair, they were all squished up front in that small library and didn't have a lot of room to sit down.
After that, we traded rooms. The younger kids moved to the cafeteria to watch The Land Before Time on a teacher's cell phone, while the older kids watched the feature-length animated The Grinch from 2018 in the library. One of the teachers brought popcorn and pretzels, which meant everyone got a free snack. Some of the kids continued coloring turkeys and fall scenes in the cafeteria. After they got tired of that, they used play clay and made turkeys from pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks, feathers, and glue...but that made just as much of a mess as the turkey hand project from last week.
The head teacher said I could go early, but I did stick around for an extra half-hour to help clean up the feather mess and wipe down and organize toys and games before everyone comes back on Monday. The kids in the cafeteria were tossing around a Nerf ball and the ones in the library were finishing The Grinch when I headed out around 4.
(Oh, and the rain returned around 6:15 and continued, sometimes heavily, off and on for the rest of the evening.)
Put on Planes, Trains, and Automobiles when I got home. All ad executive Neil Page (Steve Martin) wants is to get home to Chicago in time for his Thanksgiving dinner, but he has the worst case of bad travel luck ever. The plane is cancelled, the train breaks down, the crammed-full bus only goes to St. Louis, and there's no rental cars on the lot. He also keeps encountering Del Griffith (John Candy), a shower curtain ring salesman who is the nicest guy you'll ever meet, but is also a chatty mass of bad habits. As the two men travel in any and every way they can across the frozen Midwestern landscape, Neil discovers why Del is on the road during a holiday...and why he has a real reason to be thankful for his home and family.
What's likely director John Hughes' best movie features a hilarious script and career-best performances from Martin and Candy as the two very different men who navigate every possible obstacle on the road to Chicago. Their chemistry carries the movie, even when it takes a forced left turn into sentimentality near the end.
Switched to The Plymouth Adventure after a shower. This one goes further into the history behind the holiday. Spencer Tracy is Captain Christopher Jones, the grizzled head of the Mayflower charged with taking a group of 102 colonists to the New World on the tiny Mayflower. Among those traveling are Puritans, a strict religious sect who are going to America to avoid persecution in their native England. Jones doesn't trust them, especially after he falls for Dorothy Bradford (Gene Tierney), the wife of the group elder William Bradford (Leo Genn). Carpenter John Alden (Van Johnson) has his own sights set on pretty Priscilla Mullins (Dawn Addams), but she seems to favor Captain Miles Standish (Noel Drayton).
Tierney and Tracy are by far the most interesting thing about this spectacular action drama. The other winner here are the special effects. They won an Oscar in 1952, and they still look darn good today, especially the huge storm near the middle of the film.
Had dinner while watching three very different Thanksgiving sitcom episodes. Barney Miller's "Thanksgiving Story" has Miller and his men frustrated over not being able to go home for the holiday. Their Thanksgiving takes a strange turn when they have to deal with a group of mental health hospital escapees who invaded an automat and a man who stabbed his mooching brother-in-law in the hand with a fork during Thanksgiving dinner.
Things aren't much better in Korea on MASH. Hawkeye and Hunnicut hit "The Yalu Brick Road" to get an antidote for the salmonella from Klinger's cheap turkeys that left almost the entire base sick. They not only manage to get the medicine, but pick up a Korean soldier who keeps surrendering to them on the way. Meanwhile, Father Mulcahey has to keep Hot Lips and Winchester from killing each other, and Rizzo (G.W Baiely) wants to get his hands on Klinger and squeeze the life out of him when he's up to moving.
The swashbuckler spoof Jack of All Trades wins the award for most creative holiday episode. In "One, Two, Three, Give Me Lady Liberty," Jack and Emilia discover that Napoleon is building an enormous woman statue he intends to send to the US. Emilia is flattered when the diminutive emperor insists on using her face for the statue, but she's not as thrilled when she finds out why he's really sending it. Jack finally gets Napoleon to admit his plot at their Thanksgiving dinner, then insists on another Thanksgiving tradition to distract him - football!
Here's even more specials to tide you over before your own turkey dinner tomorrow!
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