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One day, she sent a note to my grandfather to come right away. %u201c I feel like a ripe pear in autumn, ready to fall,%u201d she said. What a strange story to retell on Thanksgiving. But it is part of a tradition, a line to the past.November is generally a gloomy month, gray, still days, everything in waiting. Nov. 1 is %u201c All Saints%u2019 Day%u201d and Nov. 2. %u201cThe Feast of All Souls.%u201d By the fourth Thursday in November (traditional proclamation begun by F.D.R.), Thanksgiving arrives.Of course empty seats at the family table of departed ones are there, but not so dominant as they would be at Christmas. Fig trees are wrapped up for protection, squirrels go about their business and the leaves, like novice parachutists, let go!A stillness prevails interrupted by the lazy flight of a dying bee. I think back to a tale my grandpa told us about his grandmother...who was bom in 1815. She was 99 years and six months old and still worked in her store in Gangi, Sicily. One d%u00a3*y she sent a note to my grandfather to come right away. %u201c How are you feeling, Nonna?%u201d he asked. %u201c I feel like a ripe pear in autumn%u2014ready to fall,%u201d she said. She closed her eyes, her head leaned on her shoulders, as if asleep. She was dead. What a strange story to retell on Thanksgiving. But it is part of tradition, a link to the past and the inevitability of autumn.My maternal grandparents are 84 years young, they have been married nearly 65 years, and although the trolley car and chicken markets are gone, we will have lasagna, turkey stuffed with rice and chicken livers, stuffed artichokes, sweet potatoes, fried breaded asparagus, stuffed mushrooms, salads, fruits, cranberry sauce (remember the great cranberry scare?), cookies and other goodies.Three years ago, tradition was broken and Grandma did not buy a turkey. My wife Judy and 1 won a 21-pounder at a raffle sponsored by the Union Gardens Association. 1 still go to the parade with sons Marcello and James. In fact, my father-in-law Joseph Zigman gets us free passes to sit near the Gulf & Western building. (He is a producer for C.B.S. news.) And we get free hot chocolate and balloons as well. Gone are the days of missing parades; the string band has been replaced by the theme from %u201c Rocky%u201d and Jimmy Durante, 85 and ill, can only watch parades on TV now, bless him. But I can still happily say with Charlie Brown %u201c to Grandmother%u2019s house we go%u201d to celebrate our great national holiday.The Indians Counterattacked With Their Own Weapon: Yams with MarshmallowsBY L. J. DAVIS%u201c You never want to try the easy way,%u201d a friend of mine said in the voice of a veteran who had left his nervous system on Porkchop Hill. %u201c The easy way is really the hard way. The easy way is definitely something you don%u2019t want to do.%u201dShe was talking about the time she ordered Thanksgiving dinner from a local catering establishment. She still dreams about it som etim es, and wakes up screaming.%u201c It seemed like such a good idea,%u201d she said. %u201c They make good cheesecake.%u201dI forbore from comment.%u201c I mean, we were working late and everything, and we had all these people coming. How was I to know it was going to arrive cold? It said right there in their brochure that it came piping hot and ready to serve. I%u2019ve still got it somewhere%u2014the brochure, I mean. I%u2019d still have the turkey, too, but I got tired of having it around the house, and I threw it out after a couple of years. I didn%u2019t know you could make pemmican from turkey. It came in handy the night the roof began to leak, though.We found the hole and slapped on a slice of breast meat. Do you want to hear about the vegetables now?%u201dI said that now seemed a good time, but only if she really wanted to talk.%u201cThey were peas and carrots. Mixed. I naven t nad peas and carrots since grade school. Did I tell you they were mixed?%u201dShe stared at the ceiling for a long time.%u201c It cost $50,%u201d she said at last. %u201c Wemight have gotten a little nourishment if we%u2019d eaten the money instead. There are threads and things in money.%u201dYes, friends, the holidays are with us again, and it%u2019s time to beat up on the kids. Holidays are like am usem ent parks: monuments to collective misery.This is especially true of Thanksgiving, a festival that owes its origin to Captain Standish%u2019s diabolical attempt to poison the local Indians by inviting them to a feast of pork pies, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, haggis, and other specialties of British cuisine, but the scheme backfired when the red men counterattacked with roast turkey, stuffing, creamed onions, and yams topped with melted marshmallows. They may have lost the battle, but they won the war.This is probably not going to win me any friends (oh, and let me take the opportunity to thank you for the many cards and letters, some of them threatening my life, that my recent columns have inspired; really, you shouldn%u2019t have), but I always have a whale of a time during the holiday season. I simply pretend that the turkey is a Cub Scout, and it%u2019s all plain sailing.While it is true that my wife seems to have put a permanent kibosh on my annual pian to go over to the Bowery and obtain a Yule bum, I make a point of visiting theDOOr with a basket%u2014 a b a sk e t in which tb e poor are invited to deposit my television set, my silverware, my stereo, and my kid%u2019s walkie-talkie. It%u2019s all in how you go about these things, you see. Holidays inthe city can be a time of true joy and fellowfeeling if only you remember to keep up the old traditions and invent new ones.Every year, for example, the servants%u2018T d still have the turkey, but I got tired of having it around the house. It came inhandy the night the roof began to leak, though.%u201dgather at the back door and patiently await their master%u2019s bounty. Why, last year one r%u00bbf thpm waited until August, which is an example of patience that should stand as an example to us all. No, you%u2019ll hear no %u201c bah! humbugs%u201d from me, by cracky. Moved by the spirit of thankfulness, I havebeen known to go down to the local welfare center and attempt to hand over my taxes in person, right on the spot, but this gesture has always sadly failed because the bureaucrat in charge refuses to introduce me personally to the family I%u2019m supporting. That seems hardly sporting; you%u2019d think they%u2019d be just dying to say thank you or something.Nor do I forget the teaching profession. Every year, at this time, despite the fact that my son is now in the third grade, his first grade teacher punctually receives her letter bomb. I don%u2019t forget man%u2019s best friend, either, and I am even now preparing a large portion of hamburger, delicately scented with bitter almond, for the big brown dog up the block whose owner appears to view the new litter law with such nonchalante hilarity. Politicians are usually forgotten when this season of thanks and fellow-feeling rolls around, but I am again the exception. It warms the cockles of my heart to think of all the fun ex-Mayor Beame must be having with the abacus I gave him last year, and this very evening I propose to gift-wrap the quarter horse I am giving my beloved Boss, Meade Esposito, so he will have something to rac^ around the track I built for him.See how simple it all is? Oh, I could sit around and kvetch like the rest of you, but 1 am a man ot action, and 1 am not only giving thanks for Senator Proxmire, giving him the South Bronx as well. They don%u2019t call me the Darth Vader of Dean Street for nothing.FACES OF A FULL LIFE: Grandma Rosalia Pantano, then 81, now 84, and her husband Antonio or me same age,with two of their great-grandchildren.string band that wore outrageous feathers and headgear and played %u201c I%u2019m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover%u201d and %u201c Heartaches.%u201d There were many parades to make up for the one that got away.In 1963, the Macy%u2019s parade was almost cancelled because of the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy a few days before. The flags were at half-mast and black bunting accompanied many of the marching outfits. Lee Harvey Oswald was not allowed to ki\\J Thanksgiving, too.I remember the newsreels in the movie houses and the Thanksgiving film specialslike Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers, and the Three Stooges, and a newsreel. One newsreel showed President Franklin D. Roosevelt carving the Thanksgiving turkey for the children at Warm Springs, Ga. The children, like himself, were crippled by polio. It was hard to believe that this vital man could not walk, but the love and devotion and inspiration of this event at Warm Springs made it a Thanksgiving of hope for all.Mrs. Carmelita Nunes was our next door neighbor on Benson Avenue. She and her husband Antonio came here from Trinidad.He was a retired British sailor and he always greeted me with %u201c Hello, my boy.%u201d We called him %u201c Pop.%u201d When Mrs. Nunes became a widow, she liVed nearby and for a while with us. When she was 80 and her health not so good, her family sent her to a nursing home. We visited with her often, but she was lonely. Occasionally, we would take her on outings. One October, we sensed the end was near and my mother visited her for a good-bye. We promised her a Thanksgiving dinner, but her heart gave out. She was 85 and leaving her in autumn was symbolic and sad.November 23,1978, THE PHOENIX, Page 13