Thanks to you, from me and The Falls

A favorite childhood memory of mine is "Going to the Falls" for breakfast.

My family lived in a former ranch hand house that was surrounded by fields on three sides with a road running in front.

At one end the road led, eventually, to one of three or four main roads that went to Twin Falls, Idaho. The other end led down to Shoshone Falls. A gorgeous and much-loved waterfall and boat drop and canyon area.

But the waterfall and park where we had breakfast so often was one turn east, one turn north and lots of turns hither and yon from our old road so far from "town." It was again in the canyon, but the technical property of Idaho Power. We really owned it, of course, along with several hundred other Twin Falls-i-ans, but definitely not some "company."

We owned it. We who arrived in the dewy summer mornings with Bisquik pancake mix in  Tupperware pitchers and Grandma with her picnic basket full of plastic plates and bacon and electric skillets and General Electric percolators.

We own it still, in our memories. Even if we're not physically gathering at the Twin Falls namesake, Grandma still joins us from her glass "urn" on the bar (where she is surely happiest), and her percolator sits on our counter cooking home-ground coffee beans. And every time we sip a cup of coffee, we know that it was poured by us just as much as it was by Grandma with the rumble of the waterfall behind her.

So, this Thanksgiving Day and every other day, the message I send is thanks for the family and the friends who have made my life so fun and silly and stupid and annoying and irritating and worthwhile. So. Much. Thanks for So Much.

It's been a lovely, odd and wonderful endless Breakfast At the Falls.