At this time last year, we’d just moved to our new home and had celebrated Thanksgiving with family, hosting a meal for about a dozen people.
The next morning, which was dark and rainy, I happened to look outside and noticed that our car’s window appeared to be down. I went out to roll it back up again, as the rain was pouring into the car.
Then I discovered that the car’s window hadn’t been left down; instead it had been broken into, probably the previous night. Thanksgiving night. Shattered glass lay all around the car’s interior, covering the driver’s seat. The car radio had been plucked out, wires hanging like animal entrails after a gutting.
We’ve never bothered to replace the car radio. But we did get a few laughs at how inexpensive the last one was, wondering what it fetched on the local stolen-car-radio market. Or maybe it was exported to some exotic spot to be hawked for more.
Tonight, when we returned home from a movie and dinner (in our other vehicle), I peeked over at the parked car to see if it had been broken again. I wondered if maybe it was a tradition, in these parts, to break car windows at holiday time. I was glad—thankful, you might say—to discover the windows intact.