This day before Thanksgiving has always been one of excitement and fun. And for a period of eight years, Thanksgiving was this huge holiday for me which gives me great memories.

The story starts right after college when my high school buddy Joe took a job in Florida, taking his new bride, my high school buddy Jackie with him. They had their first child about a year later and invited me and a few of our other high school buddies to join them for Thanksgiving. I remember that first trip quite well because it was only the second time I had been on a plane, and I ended getting stuck in Cincinnati for several hours because of a mechanical breakdown. That’s back in the day when they would give you a voucher for a hotel room and meal vouchers. I ended getting rerouted to Atlanta where I met up with some of my other buddies who were on their way to the same get-together.

On that trip we all helped to make the turkey dinner, took care of the new baby, played games, drove to the beach, swimming in November, and took my first trip to Disney World, living a kid’s dream at 23. With that get-together we set a precedent that would follow our group of friends for many years to come.

That trip to Orlando was in 1985, and the next year we scheduled a Thanksgiving gathering in Northern Virginia, where Mike lives. That was an easy nighttime 6-hour drive to DC (although I was really sleepy driving on the George Washington Parkway!). By 1987, I had moved to Tennessee and friends joined me for turkey, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and a tour of Jack Daniels distillery based from my bachelor pad in west Nashville.

What was cool about most of these trips was these were the times we met new girlfriends or fiancés and they instantly joined into the fun.

As a newly married couple we went back down to Orlando in 1988, DC in 89, and stayed close to home in Erie in 1990. By 1991, kids were coming along and those of us living in the north rented a big 15-passenger van and drove from Erie, picking up our friends in DC and made our way down I-95 back to Florida. What a wild trip with my 7 month old son, taking turns driving down the gas tank, stopping at South of the Border, and all the other sights through the south finally arriving at 3 AM in Orlando.

As what happens when you have kids, your season of life changes so much that pre-child traditions begin to die. We did get one more trip to DC in 1992, and got the gang together in Erie in 1993. But life began to take over and the Thanksgiving tradition ended.

We did do one reprise of our group getting together in the summer of 2002. It just so happened that all of our birthdays in this group were within weeks of each other, and 2002 was the year almost all of us turned forty, so we gathered back in Northern Virginia for a great reunion, with kids and walking the Mall, and the new Star Wars movie, and fireworks over the Washington Monument. A most excellent time.

Those nine Thanksgivings meant friends and fun and adventures, celebration and catching up, watching movies and listening to music…doing life together. I have such fond memories of those times. To my buddies and to you, have a joyful Thanksgiving!