It has been a while since we have gotten the amount of rainfall that we received over the Thanksgiving holidays. It wasn’t enough to hurt the holiday celebration, nor the Swine Time event in Climax, Ga.

My folks down in the southwestern part of the county reported about three inches of rain, which was great compared to the sprinkles that we have been getting. My friend in Americus said that he had gotten almost five inches of rain. The maps on the Weather Channel showed more rain passing to our north that we were getting.

I traveled down to the panhandle of Florida the first of last week. When I crossed the bridge in Chattahoochee, I noticed that the small island above the bridge was almost underwater. It has been there all summer, making a big island when the water was really low. So I knew that the folks in Blountstown would be happy, and they were.

The stores was stocking up on catfishing stuff, as the catfish were already biting. I guess they thought with that much water there, they would have a fighting chance. The Apalachicola River was over six feet and had been over seven feet. Before the rain, the reading had been in the minus figures. There is no dam between them and the coast, so the water just flows right on down to the Gulf of Mexico and begins to turn salty. Good for that area and helps keep the Gulf full.

Florida’s deer hunting season came in back on Thanksgiving Day, giving Georgians almost a month’s head start. We have to put up with some still hot weather when we begin to hunt, while they have the cool that comes with and after Thanksgiving to help them in their pursuit of the wall-hanger. I say that, but they are like us. First we need to have something to put on the table and fill an empty stomach before we attempt to go after a trophy. You know a trophy buck can hear your stomach growl and will go off in another direction.

I was just thinking about a big ole deer ham sliced and run through a cuber both ways. You may want to soak it a little to remove some of the wild taste, if your wife is like mine. If she doesn’t know it is deer, it will be good. If she does know that the meal is deer, she can’t hardly eat it. Over the years she has eaten a lot of deer because we didn’t tell her what it was. She knew it wasn’t pork, but actually thought it was beef. If she knows and doesn’t think about it, the cubed deer steak is good and she will reach for seconds on deer sausage, but then so will most everyone else.

We had a great Thanksgiving Day and the meal was some kinda good. I eat everything that one normally eats on this holiday and then finished it off with a cheesecake, not a slice, but a whole cheesecake. My sister, Judy, makes those things and they are about as good as regular food. My other sister, Joan, makes a 17-layer chocolate cake that is out of this world. I can eat enough to make my stomach not just ache, but flat hurt. No big deal as I know why it hurts.

My mother, Mildred, did make us some dressing that was better than anything else we had. We didn’t have dumplings and next year we need to rectify that as they are something that I love. As a matter of fact the Christmas meal needs to have them. And my wife, Rhonda, can make some killer dumplings.

One really good thing about food and cooking is that our kids, Kim and David, can both cook as good as anyone else in the family can. Except Grandmother Howell had them on colored butter beans. You know that my brother, Freddy, passed away back in August, so I ate enough for him also.