Diversity is a word that can be used to describe how American families celebrate Thanksgiving Day.

A modern day celebration would not be complete without a noontime feast fit for a king. The menu starts with a smoked turkey and a baked ham and includes dressing and gravy, cranberry sauce, salads, casseroles and vegetable sides. The meal would not be complete without a glass of sweet tea and a cup of hot coffee with cake and pie.

Afterwards, the men folk rub their stuffed stomachs, switch on the TV and catch a few glimpses of a professional football game before they fall asleep. Meanwhile, the women folk tear through a stack of preprint advertisements looking for Christmas gift bargains they’ll scoop up on Black Friday. Actually, part of the holiday has been seized by the big box stores beaconing shoppers with pre-Black Friday bargains.

So, what are the men folk left to do but return to the table for a plateful of Thanksgiving dinner leftovers.

This kind of Thanksgiving celebration is very different from the way it was observed by farm families when I was a kid.

Few families raised turkeys back then and wild turkeys were few and far between in Alabama.  Every farm family had laying hens, however, and a fat hen cooked tender provided the stock and meat for a big pan of chicken and cornbread dressing.

The chicken and dressing and its counterparts never materialized on the Thanksgiving Day that stands out in my memory.

The prediction of a hard freeze is what changed the order of Thanksgiving Day activity on our farm in 1948.

“We’ve been waiting for a cold snap,” our father said. “ It’s coming tonight and we’ll be killing a hog tomorrow. You boys set up the pots and pile up some wood. We’ll need a hot fire going first thing in the morning.”

Nothing could’ve pleased me more. I could already see the water gurgling in the pots and hear the pop of the .22 caliber rifle putting down one of our 300-lb. Hampshire hogs.

Thanksgiving Day became hog killing day, a time of excitement and on-the-job training for a 13-year-old boy. I relished the job of wielding a sharp butcher knife and helping remove the stiff hair from the hog’s carcass and raising it on a homemade stand for dressing.

After the entrails were removed, the first piece of meat to come off was a strip of tenderloin from the backbone and ribs. It was carried to the kitchen where it would become the entrée for our Thanksgiving dinner.

After five fast- paced hours of hog killing, we sat down at the dinner table and stuffed ourselves with mother’s batter-fried tenderloin, scrambled eggs and biscuits and gravy.

Then, we busied ourselves with the grinding, mixing and packaging of a washtub filled with country pork sausage, a delicacy we would enjoy until the next spring.

Now, wasn’t that a country Thanksgiving to remember?

Clif Knight is a staff writer for the Hartselle Enquirer.