I Give Thanks For My Family

I came downstairs as soon as My parents left, and wrote this down, so as not to forget. This came from My grandmother. Forgive mis-spellings if I haven't gotten back to fix them.

Everyone on the street trusted my great-grandparents. So during the war, and especially as it came to the end, all the women would bring things to them to store. They'd pour the bottom of the whiskey bottles into larger ones, combine the flour, raisin, currants, sugar, butter, all of it.

Then, on the day that the war was called over (VE day), all the children were sent on a Church picnic to the country. My grandma had been walking across a pond or a stream and cut her big toe open on a piece of glass, so walked in with a bandaged foot. When they came back, they found the table of the Irvine house covered in baked goods of every kind. The men of the area had been hordeing firewood for weeks, and created a huge bonfire in the middle of the street.

That night, as the entire community had stuffed themselves with the goodies, the men burned Hitler and Mosulini in effigy from the lamppost over the fire, and formed a conga line that danced through all of Govan and Glasgow. My grandmother was allowed to leave, bandaged foot and all, and doesn't remember sleeping at all that night.