Soap Box

*NOTE* Another busy week and a few bus troubles have resulted in another Soapbox Rewind. With Thanksgiving almost upon us, Charlie' talks about the holiday and his major production that is his cornbread dressing. - TeamCDB

As I write this it is the Monday before Thanksgiving and I�m sitting on my bus in Fort Wayne, Indiana looking out the window at the snow flurries, which make it seem as if winter has indeed made its annual appearance.

Now don�t get me wrong, I love warm, sunshiny weather just as much as the next person, but there�s something about a good crisp morning that just puts a spring in your step. Especially the first of the cold weather when you start breaking out the coats and scarves. There�s just something exhilarating about it.

It puts you in the mood for a horseback ride in the backwoods and building a roaring fire in the fireplace. The geese fly high and the wind moans around the side of the house and you know that the holiday season is fast approaching.

Thanksgiving at our house means cooking up a big meal and having about 25 or so people for dinner. Thanksgiving is one of only two days in the year when I prepare my pièce de r�sistance, my legendary cornbread dressing. And let me tell you people, my cornbread dressing can make your tongue slap your eyeballs out.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it sounds like I�m bragging and maybe I am but I ordinarily can�t boil water. I can�t cook a pork chop or even do such a mundane thing as fry an egg.

So if I�m able to concoct one culinary masterpiece why shouldn�t I toot my own horn about it just a little bit?

Now before you go asking me for my recipe, let me tell you that my recipe is not written down. I carry it in my head. When I start putting my dressing together I do it the old-fashioned way. By taste. I add a pinch of this, a dash of that and stir, stir, stir.

As the dinner guests start arriving and I�m sitting at the table, wearing an apron and sometimes a cook�s hat, constructing my coveted concoction they stop by and look wistfully at the dressing pan and you can tell that they would just love to put a spoon into it and have just a tiny taste, something which is verboten in my little corner of the kitchen. Absolutely nobody but me is allowed to check out the wares, which I do quite frequently, making just the right facial expressions before reaching for the sage or the salt.

The dressing is divided into two baking pans, one for those who have a taste for my oyster dressing and one pan for the less adventurous who prefer the plain kind.

We then put it in the oven and let it bake for a while, later taking it out to a chorus of oohs and aahs and deposit it on the table to be devoured by our hungry guests.

I love Thanksgiving. I love making my bi-yearly cornbread dressing. I love having lots of people over. I love the afternoon football games and I love the fact that Thanksgiving is the unofficial start of the greatest season of them all, Christmas.

I wish you all a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving this year. I wish you warmth and family and I would ask you all a favor. This year when you say your prayer of thanks would you please join me in saying a prayer for the safety and soon return of all our military men and women, wherever they are serving this Thanksgiving.

And please ask God to comfort the families who will miss them so much at this special time of the year.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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