When I was a kid, Thanksgiving meant a sojourn to Grandma’s house. She lived about two hours away in an adjacent state, so Daddy and Momma got us up early to pack up the old station wagon to make Grandma’s by lunchtime.

Grandma always cooked a big turkey with all the trimmings and saved the drumsticks for me. It wasn’t so much that I preferred dark meat; rather, I liked to pretend that I was Robin Hood, gnawing heartily on that drumstick in the midst of my band of merry men in Sherwood Forest. I guess I’d seen one too many Errol Flynn flicks or something.

The turkey and dressing were delicious, but what I really relished about Grandma’s Thanksgiving feasts were her homemade pumpkin pies topped with mounds of whipped cream. I don’t know why we never had pumpkin pies except at Thanksgiving, but absence certainly made the heart grow fonder. They were scrumptious right down to the crust, the edges of which Grandma sculpted with a fork.

Of course, that was eons ago. Grandma has long since gone to her Heavenly reward, but I still remember running into her arms as a child upon arriving at her home on Thanksgiving Day. And I can still almost taste those Texas orange pumpkin pies.

You know, Grandma’s pumpkin pies were kind of like cars – they don’t make ‘em like they used to. You can still buy a pumpkin pie at the grocery store, but they lack one important ingredient that Grandma baked into hers – love.

I thank God for those memories. At the rate I’m burning up brain cells these days, I hope I can keep such recollections in my heart and mind for a while longer.

As a youngster en route to Grandma’s house, I never once pondered the freedom of being able to travel unfettered across state lines to visit a loved one. We didn’t have to stop at a checkpoint and produce any papers for an armed guard and his German Shepherd sidekick. The biggest obstacle we experienced was me and my sisters arguing about who got to sit by the window.

Heck, I was just a kid, so I guess I can be forgiven for never considering the sacrifices that had been made to ensure those blessings of freedom. I don’t have that excuse today, so I hope when I pray at Thanksgiving, I’ll pause to thank God for allowing me to reside in America. Yes, we have our problems. Some would argue that we’re at the outset of a four-year recession. Besides our economic woes, we continue to face serious social issues on the domestic front as well as the specter of possible terrorist attacks from abroad.

Yet, I remain thankful that I still live in the greatest nation in the history of our planet. As a for instance, Americans just conducted a national election in which a total reversal of political power and ideology occurred in the administrative branch of our government. Statistically, more than four out of every 10 American voters didn’t want the guy who ultimately won election as our next president.

But you know what? There was no revolution. No looting or rioting in the streets. No coups plotting a military overthrow of the government. No assassination attempts.

In some other oppressed countries around the world, all of those things might have been real possibilities. But not in America. We are extraordinary, and we need to be truly thankful for that.

It was kind of like who got the last piece of Grandma’s pumpkin pie. We drew straws, and somebody got lucky. The losers always grumbled a little, but then we all made like good New Orleans Saints fans and started waiting for next year.