BEST PLACE IN TOWN TO HAVE HOLIDAY DINNER

South on Naperville-Plainfield Road, a short ways before you come to the shallow Spring Brook, was the entrance to Joe and Mary Ory's 80-acre farm.  Each holiday, as Grandma and the women busied themselves in the kitchen, Grandpa and the men stood shooting the breeze and sipping on a bottle of beer, but us cousins had the most fun.  

Ray, Carol, and Patsy Haberman built long, twisted tunnels with hay bales in the hayloft for Laurie Ory, and Kathy and Kurt Keroson, to crawl through them.  It was hot, dusty, and pitch black in those tunnels, and sometimes we'd fall into a crevice if one of the hay bales was missing on the bottom layer.  We'd have to scramble as fast as we could so that the next kid in line wouldn't come crashing down on top of us!  

Then we'd head back to the farmhouse to fix ourselves a plate with turkey, and mashed potatoes piled high with a crater of homemade gravy in the middle, which us kids ate together in the living room.  Later, we'd hear the adults laughing and periodically screaming as they played poker, using matchsticks to keep tally. 

One Easter, after my cousin Carol spent hours hiding and re-hiding my Easter eggs, we all played a game of baseball in front of the barn.  Us little kids were the catchers.  Boy, could my uncles Ray and Pete Ory ever whack that baseball across the farmyard!  The rest of us would be jumping and hollering as they ran the bases to make a homerun.

Gosh, how I miss the farm - the best place in town to have holiday dinner.