By eight

 By eight

Thanksgiving morning in Crawfordville and already the mill would be turning, squeezing out the sugar cane juice into the 5 gallon buckets with the burlap filter, to carry and pour into the sixty gallon Columbus iron kettle, twelve times, to make sixty gallons. The campfire would be stoked to stave off the morning chill. Mamma would be in the kitchen over the gas stove lit by fat lightered sticks, making pancakes and bacon, the aroma wafting down the dog trot hallway, waking those not already up. And so we made Ole Homewood Syrup. Near noon the first cooking would be poured into the Wild Turkey whiskey and various bottles and around one o’clock we’d pause and have Thanksgiving dinner beneath the pear trees surrounded by the grape vines and blueberries, rife with myriad memories.