Thanksgiving came early to Beckley this year. Duane and Chris kindly invited us to experience a real American Thanksgiving before we went home. We’d had a pretend one in England the year before when Drew came a-wooing (Emily, that is). What a fine lad he is, and also his brothers. Duane and Chris sure know how to bring up kids, don’t they?

Well, the meal was fantastic, turkey, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie – you know the sort of thing. Those settlers certainly ate well. Duane must have been up early that day with his gun, hunting that turkey on Maust Mountain. And Chris, cutting up that pumpkin (which had been the prize item in her vegetable patch) and getting rid of all the seeds. As she’s such a busy lady we wouldn’t have minded if she had opened a tin.

The ride down to Beckley was great. Duane’s car seemed to know where it was going. I needn’t have held the steering wheel. I could have taken a little nap. I thought I was dreaming. Drew was telling us this unbelievable story of two gorillas who had a house in Beckley. Perhaps he meant guerilla as in urban terrorist? Or two very hairy men? No, these were real gorillas. Drew and Matt used to visit them, no doubt to monitor their welfare. Apparently, they would shout and rattle the fence to get the gorillas’ attention. They loved those gorillas.

We took a detour to find the house. The gorillas had gone. So had the fence. No gorillas today. We sped on to McTaggart Drive.

If you ever visit Maust Mansions visit the bathroom. it has such a lovely, warm feeling and well decorated.

The meal was superb. The music afterwards was not. Drew dusted off his saxophone while I thumped on the piano. Sally, Hannah and Justin made noises with a trumpet and danced around the room. Altogether the effect was stunning.

Duane, Chris and Georgina sat with shocked expressions on their faces.

You can have too much of a good thing. The time came to leave. We would be flying back to England in 2 days.

It had been one of the best holidays we had ever had. It was very sad saying goodbye to Emily, but we knew we would be back to see her again in America the Beautiful.