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Nov. 24, 2021 - Rudy Giuliani
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Thanksgiving Then and Now: With Special Guests Joe Paggs and David Webb | November 24th 2021
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Hello, this is Rudy Giuliani, and I am back with another and a very special episode of Rudy's Common Sense, and a very different episode of Rudy's Common Sense, as you can see, the Thanksgiving episode.
So we're going to devote this episode to Thanksgiving.
A little bit about its history, a little bit about how it developed, A little bit how it is practiced in America by different people.
We'll just pick a couple people and look at the different traditions.
And then a more serious reflection on what it is that we can be thankful for, because there are many more things to be thankful for than not.
And having a great day like this, It gives you that perspective.
Because sometimes in life, you concentrate on the negative too much.
And we all have a lot to thank God for.
But let's go back to the history of it.
And it started in Plymouth, now in the state of Massachusetts.
And it started really with the voyage of a group that was denominated as the Pilgrims.
So they went to the Netherlands, and they were very well treated there, and they were very well received in the Netherlands, where there was something akin to freedom of religion.
But they became homesick for their English traditions.
They couldn't go back to England, and they made a deal, actually, with the king.
And they were granted a piece of land at the mouth of the Hudson River.
Uh-huh.
The Hudson River.
That's right.
New York.
And they were granted that by the king, and they got a charter that allowed them to do that, and it took a while, and they organized a voyage, and then they took a ship to England, and then they set sail from England with two ships.
And before they got too far, one of the ships basically fell apart and had to go back and whatever.
So they didn't really begin their voyage until September 6th of 1620.
100 people on this ship.
Very small.
All of their belongings.
Some farm animals.
They were on the ship for 66 days, packed together.
They're putting the cargo part of the ship.
The Mayflower was not a Queen Mary.
The Mayflower was a commercial ship.
So they arrived at Cape Cod on November 11, 1620.
And then within a few weeks, they sailed up the coast and they saw Plymouth.
They said, this was like a great place to build our houses.
It happened to be the place where the Wampanoag people used to live, but they had just had a tremendous plague, illness, brought on by earlier English settlers who brought diseases there, and it wiped out that whole particular community of Wampanoags.
And so it looked empty.
And they finally came ashore, and started building. A few of them did. They didn't all
come ashore until March of 1621, when they had enough houses and everyone could live on land.
Well, shortly after, all of the pilgrims came ashore and the Mayflower was
getting ready to leave. And the date that's given is March 16th of 1621. A native named Samoset walked
into the colony without any introduction and he greeted them in English.
And he said, welcome!
In English!
I think the pilgrims who met with him were shocked that a Native American would speak English, you know, dressed in a traditional garb that they would wear in those days.
There's a picture of it, or, you know, I guess a rendition of it, give you a sense of it.
Can you imagine their shock when this guy who's Samizdat says, Welcome.
And he was very friendly, and he stayed a long time.
He told them a lot about the land, the territory, how to use the land.
It went on and on and on and on.
And it got so late, they had to invite him to stay over.
They were frightened, but he stayed all night.
He got up the next morning.
He had come from a tribe in Maine that I guess had been largely either separated or died from illnesses because a lot of the death then for both the colonists and the Native Americans were these illnesses that I guess in both cases, you know, they were immune to certain things and not others and they spread diseases that they weren't prepared for.
But in any event, Samus had said he would come back.
And he said he was going to bring back with him another Native American named Chisquantum who went by the name of Squanto.
And he was going to bring Squanto back because Squanto had actually been to England and he spoke English much, much better and would be able to help them even more.
Well, this was the 16th and the 17th.
St.
Patrick's Day, by the way.
Remember it that way.
And he came back in short order on March 22nd, 1621.
Squanto, Samoset, and 60 others.
Within one week, they came back and they showed them how to plant corn.
They went out, found the other side of the brook, found the place where it was best to do it, and showed them how to plant corn and possibly some other crops.
They later helped them with learning how to fish.
Uh, which was somewhat different than the way they were, uh, used to.
How to take advantage of the berries and the other things that were available.
And, uh, and some tips on hunting the, the, uh, live animals that were plentiful, but, you know, they weren't used to, uh, this kind of, this kind of, uh, terrain and this kind of hunting.
And they oriented them.
I mean, this is wonderful, isn't it?
And then finally they brought with them the Sokhom, that would be the chief, the great Sokhom, Masowat.
He came and visited them and spent four or five days with them and they And they concluded the first treaty that I can think of in the New World, right?
This is all recorded in Plymouth Pantation by William Bradford and also by a more contemporary version of it by Winslow.
Who was a colonist himself.
Now you'd say, oh, this is going to last.
This isn't the word the paper was written on.
This is going to last.
All the terrible things we hear about Native Americans and what was done to them by the whites or vice versa.
This treaty lasted for 50 years.
50 years apiece between the pilgrims and the tribe, the Wampanoag tribe, and then this applied to the other various groups, nations.
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So, This meeting between Squanto and Samoset and Masawat and the colonists or the pilgrims was really, really fortuitous.
This is really what got them through.
Remember, they had lost half their people.
They were very, very smart, industrious people, but this was a new land.
It was a different way of farming.
It was a different way of hunting.
It was even a different way of fishing.
And within a short period of time, once Samoset and Squanto and the 60 other Native Americans in Massawat arrived, they taught them very quickly, and they picked up very quickly, how to fish in those, you know, waters.
They taught them how to hunt, the most effective, what animals to focus on.
And most importantly, they taught them how to farm.
And within a short period of time, within a year or two, they were writing back to England talking about how plentiful it was from starving.
So when we talk about the difficult history of this, we've got to spend a little time on the beautiful history of it.
Because this was a beautiful relationship.
And again, it lasted 50 years apiece until unfortunately people who were more zealous and Remind you some people today, you know, just don't get human nature.
But in any event, this was a beautiful relationship.
So how did Thanksgiving come about?
So we've got two real sources.
We've got two real sources for this.
Edward Winslow, who was a contemporary source.
And then we have Governor Bradford.
William Bradford, who wrote several decades later about the history of it.
So Winslow's version of it, which was called The Pilgrim, The Pilgrim Journal, which again was basically contemporary.
Uh, says that Governor Bradford sent four men.
This would be in either September, October, November.
It's unclear if it was November by the way.
Most people think it was November of 1621, but it could have been earlier.
So William Bradford, after Squanto and Samoset and Masawat and the 60 or so natives that they brought with them, really got them to, in very short order, develop a pretty good colony with food and staple food, and some of them lived with them.
Bradford was the governor, and he was kind of impressed, and he sent four men out on a fouling mission in order to prepare a three-day celebration.
According to Edward Winslow, writing contemporaneously, hundreds of years ago, this is what he wrote.
A harvest being gotten in, our governor, that was William Bradford, right, sent four men on fouling.
That so we might, after a special manner, rejoice together.
And after we had gathered the fruits of our labors, they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.
And then when we go to Aunt Plymouth Plantation, whose Bradford's account of it, which is done several decades later, He decided they were going to have a fall harvest celebration.
And when he writes about it, he says, there was a great source of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, ducks, geese, and swans, as well as herbs, onions, and nuts, as well as clams, and oysters, and lobster, This is what they gathered.
And they invited, or the Wampanoag guests invited themselves, and they brought an offering of five deer that they had cured and gotten ready for the feast.
And this is when they got together, probably without any doubt, The Native Americans outnumbering the Pilgrims, possibly by two to one.
And very few women.
At this point, there were only four women.
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It fit very much into their tradition, their Christian tradition of giving thanks to God
for the harvest.
And it also, by the way, fit into the Wampanoag way of life, who, who, who, who, who, who,
who felt that, who believed religiously that all of God's creation was sacred and that the hunting and the fishing and the harvesting and the planting of crops was all to be done, you know, very carefully.
And the whole animal was used.
It included not just deer and moose and beaver, but skunk and raccoon.
So, they had also had a tradition.
of having harvest celebrations and celebrations about gathering food.
When they were very successful in gathering food, it was common for the Wampanoags to have a Thanksgiving celebration.
So this Thanksgiving, this first one, is really an amalgam of the English tradition of religious Thanksgiving and the Wampanoag tradition of giving thanks for food.
The 50-year tradition finally, unfortunately, ended.
And then we went into 100 years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, doing away with Christmas, doing away with celebrations, going into the witch hunts, the whole thing.
But there was, I guess you would say, one brief shining moment of Camelot.
And we could regard Camelot as the relationship between the Wampanoags And those wonderful people, the pilgrims who came over and half of them are lost and half of them remained and the half of them that remained helped to build the greatest nation on earth.
That we can celebrate.
Celebrate it 100%.
Well, this Thanksgiving tradition was celebrated but in no really formal way.
It was celebrated in different parts of the country.
It was celebrated in the South.
It was celebrated mostly in the Northeast.
And then in 1789, when George Washington was being sworn in as the first president of the United States, he decreed a Thanksgiving celebration.
And that tradition lives on, believe it or not, here in the city of New York.
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Well, just to clarify a few points about the Pilgrims and the Puritans, because I think this can be somewhat confusing, but the Pilgrims are the ones who made the compact with the Wampanoag natives, with Massawat and Samoset and Squanto, to live in peace.
They lived in peace and they helped each other.
They helped each other to become quite successful and quite bountiful, and you have contemporary letters back to England eventually talking about how this is a land of plenty.
That came about because of the wisdom of the Native Americans who taught them and of course their own industriousness and their own decency and being willing to work with each other.
It's a wonderful, wonderful story if it's concentrated on the right way and separated out from kind of the bigger picture that was going on.
I mean it's always true in society you have good people and bad people.
But there's a core here that's a wonderful thing for our young people to know, and it's a wonderful thing to celebrate, even if it's 50 years of peace.
Well, the Thanksgiving tradition continued, as I said, and there were various celebrations of it.
But the thing that really seared it in the American memory was, during the
Revolution, the Continental Congress would ordain days of thanksgiving, more or less
days of prayer. And Washington and his troops would participate in that as a way of giving
them, I guess, support and sustenance, right?
And then in 1789, when George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States, in the capital of the United States at the time, New York City, At basically Wall Street, where his statue is today, he issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government.
And he called upon Americans to express their gratitude for the happy conclusion to the country's war of independence and the successful ratification of the United States Constitution.
And then his successors, Adams and Madison, also designated different days of Thanksgiving.
Wow, a lot of history here, right?
And a lot of good things.
Well, Washington decreed a Thanksgiving.
Adams and Madison did.
New York became a real center of it.
1817, it was the first one, first state to develop and to adopt an annual Thanksgiving holiday.
In 1863, in the middle of, or the height of, or the terror and the horrible nature of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln finally heeded her request.
And he scheduled a Thanksgiving celebration for the final Thursday in November.
And it was celebrated on that day every year until 1939.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved the holiday up a week in order to create more retail sales.
And finally that became so unpopular that by 1941 Roosevelt had to cave in and put it back on the fourth Thursday in November where it's remained.
So this is the Thanksgiving that we're celebrating, the one that was decreed by our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, reaffirmed by every president since, changed a little by Roosevelt, and then put back.
The Thanksgiving Day parade, the football, the whole thing.
The whole thing.
And the New York City Synagogue still celebrating Washington's Thanksgiving.
Well, we are very, very pleased To have my good friend, he's one of the best talk show hosts in the country, one of the best, Joe Pagliarulo, terrific guy, and also a member of the New York City Police Department, as you can see.
But he's now living in San Antonio, Texas, one of the great exciting cities, and in a state, I'd probably be more comfortable there than in New York right now.
So how are you?
I'm doing well, Mayor.
I appreciate you having me on.
And yeah, I love New York City, but we are a little bit more free in Texas right now.
So Maria and I are doing this podcast, or well, I'm doing this podcast because we want to save Thanksgiving.
They're already starting.
It's not as strong as Columbus and all the other things, but there was a movement in a few states to do away with Thanksgiving.
There's going to be a counter-demonstration up at Plymouth Rock.
Can you imagine that?
A counter-demonstration at Plymouth Rock.
And they don't seem to realize that the Pilgrims, probably all the American colonists, had the best relationship with the Native Americans.
They made a peace treaty.
They had 50 years of peace.
It wasn't until the Puritans came in and took over and kind of wiped out the separatists that the problems began.
And the Native Americans, even, that go back into their history have wonderful memories of
the pilgrims. They're just exceptional people. But in any event, you know, I think it's our job,
you, me, and people who feel the way we do to preserve our traditions. And what's better than
Thanksgiving? I mean, who could object to Thanksgiving? Well, the crazy left wing objects to
Thanksgiving. Obviously. So, Joe, where did you grow up, Joe? I'm from Long Island, New York.
Amityville is my hometown.
Copaig is where we lived, really, in Suffolk County.
But yeah, I'm a New Yorker, originally.
We moved to Florida like just about everybody else in New York when I was a kid.
How old were you when you went to Florida?
Seven.
But we went back and forth to New York a lot.
And from a huge family, Rudy, I've got my father was one of eight.
And the tradition was the paternal leader of the family was my grandfather, who came on a boat from Bari, Italy, from B-A-R-I, Italy.
Like my grandfather was also?
We were surrounded by everybody all the time, no matter what the holiday was.
And Thanksgiving was no different.
Just family and toys and food, you know?
Where would you have Thanksgiving when you were a young boy?
Well, in New York, it would be at my grandfather's house in Copaig.
They had a big basement, and I don't know if you have the same memories, but in the big Italian households, you had sort of a living area, and then you had a gigantic basement where you sang and you danced and you had the parties and everything, right?
Same experience.
My uncle in Merrick had a basement, and he was a veteran of the Second World War, where he was behind enemy lines for three years.
Right.
And all of a sudden, it turned out he was a painter and he painted, he did his basement, he did it as a, all South Sea murals.
Right.
And it was, it was, it was like a whole different experience.
Unbelievable.
It was like this, it was like a simple Cape Cod house.
And he made it into almost a mini mansion.
It was absolutely beautiful.
And my grandmother used to have us all, sometimes 20, 25, all over the place, sitting in bedrooms.
It was ridiculous.
So, and what did you, you know, the interesting thing about Italian, as an Italian-American family, right?
Yeah, right.
So grandpa came from Italy.
Right, and Grandma was first-generation American, but she was basically from Naples as well.
Like, they came from Naples, and then she was born here.
So she was almost born there.
So we had Bari, we had Baresi, we had Navoletan, and the traditions sort of met in the middle.
It was very, very cool to watch.
Did they disagree?
Oh, a lot.
About which was better?
But Grandpa was still the boss.
They would disagree in Italian, and it was very loud, and then Grandpa would go, And I don't know what he said, but that was it.
The argument was over.
So what would be, how many at a typical Thanksgiving dinner?
I mean, if it were in New York, Rudy, it was probably, I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say 90 or 100 people.
Whoa!
90 or 100 people?
It was loud, so you knew we were all happy.
We're all, you know, talking over each other.
And yeah, it would be a lot of people.
I think I probably have about 150 cousins just from that side.
Yeah, my goodness.
So, and then what would the menu be?
Yeah, the menu was actually traditional.
My grandfather was interesting.
My grandparents wouldn't teach their kids Italian.
They said, we want you to be American.
Wow.
So they, whatever the American tradition was, we had the turkey.
You know how similar this is?
Say it again?
This is totally similar, but go ahead.
Totally similar.
Well, that's what it was.
I mean, when I asked my grandfather, why didn't you teach my father Italian?
He said, because I wanted him to be an American, Joey.
And it was so amazing to me, Rudy, the difference between generations, where they came over, knowing what the land of opportunity was all about, they picked up the traditions for Thanksgiving, Halloween, whatever it happened to be, and they did what the Americans did, and they didn't want people to look at their kids and say, oh, these are kids of immigrants, these are kids of people who aren't from here.
Well, I'm going to tell you my experience is exactly the same thing.
My grandfather came from Montecatini, outside of Florence.
He actually took the boat in Genoa.
I have his entry papers.
He had $20 in his pocket.
Wow.
And he was a tailor, an Italian tailor.
Rodolfo, my name.
And all of his children, he had all of his children here.
My father couldn't speak a word of Italian, nor my mother.
My mother's family came from Naples.
She never learned Italian.
They both tried when they were older to learn Italian, and they were terrible.
They tried so hard.
I mean, when they got to be about 40 or 50, they wanted to kind of reclaim They're Italian roots, in a way.
Right.
But my grandfather, you know, lived through the Second World War, and he would fight with his Goombas, right?
Right.
Some of them would say, oh, why are we fighting Italy?
And my grandfather would go crazy.
He would say, you like Italy so much?
Go back and fight for them.
Here is where we are.
My sons are going to fight for America.
One of his sons, he lost for 10 days.
They thought he was dead.
He disappeared from a ship.
But he was like a very, very patriotic American.
And exactly like you, my grandparents are from Italy, parents here, and then my generation.
Well, what's interesting is I was a TV news anchor in Albany, as you know.
I was at the CBS affiliate WRGB.
I was the main anchor.
And I was at the Egg.
You know Albany, so you know the Egg is like a big auditorium, right?
I was there, and my name is Pagliarulo.
We pronounce it Pagliarulo.
In fact, my grandfather... Like the Yankee Red Sox third baseman.
Exactly right.
But my grandfather actually said Pag-a-rulo.
And I said, why do you say Pag-a-rulo?
And he told me, he said, again, we're in America now, we should pronounce it like it looks.
So, okay.
So a lady came up to me with a very thick Italian accent.
She said, look, Joey, why you no pronounce your name Pagliarulo?
Like in Italy.
I said, because my grandfather came from Italy, and he said it's Pagliarulo.
She said, but when he died, Will you pronounce it right?
I said, first of all, I never want him to die.
And secondly, I'm going to pronounce it like Grandpa says, because he's the boss.
I found it to be very interesting.
Rudy, do you find the same thing?
Yes, of course, I'll tell you.
The one side wants you to be nothing but Italian, and the other side wants you to be nothing but American.
And it's almost like two sides pulling on each other.
So my name is really pronounced Giuliani, like Giulio Cesare, Giulio Caesar.
And in fact, if I pronounced it that way, they'd probably smell it better.
But my family has always pronounced it Giuliani, which has led certain people to think I'm Jewish.
I swear, I'm telling you the truth.
There are people who thought I was Jewish because the name is Giuliani.
Wow.
That's funny.
People when I was running a coal company.
So just tell me, did you have lasagna at the beginning?
I don't think so.
I mean, I thought about it, and I even asked my sister last night, I said, what is the Italian tradition that we did?
She said, I don't think we ever did.
Isn't that interesting?
We did the turkey, we did the green bean casserole, we did the stuffing, we did, you know, the beets.
So I think that they really, really Americanized it.
Now, if you want to talk about Easter, Easter was a very different thing.
We had the bread with the eggs cooked into the bread.
Absolutely.
I mean, because that was the holy day, but Thanksgiving is traditionally American.
Right.
And I think they wanted to make it absolutely American.
Now, we still sang Italian songs, and Uncle Angelo was at the piano.
We still had the whole thing, where the family all had their own individual talents.
And would you fight about politics?
Not really.
I don't remember us ever talking about politics.
My family was always, they always fought about, they were about roughly half and half.
Roughly half and half.
I think I might have been too young, to be honest with you.
I got into politics, oddly, when I was about 10 or 11.
But that got me into it.
So I don't remember in New York being into politics.
They would get into bitter fights.
I mean, they loved each other, but they would—Republican, Democrat, Goldwater, and Johnson.
It was unbelievable.
Nowadays, those Democrats would be, you know, right-wing lunatics compared to the Democrats of today.
Oh, absolutely.
They were all blue dogs.
I mean, the Democrats already left them big time.
Go get the communists, you know.
You know what's interesting about the questioning of Thanksgiving is so stupid.
It really was an opportunity to see how the founders of this country, the early arrivers, really did get along with the Indians.
The American Indians taught them how to cull the land and so on, and they really did get along.
They loved each other.
It's a beautiful story.
But we act like all of the Native Americans were all nice people and all the people from Europe were bad.
That's not true.
There was a lot of violence here already.
There were bad people killing good people way before the settlers came over.
So why were we telling the story and pretending like we were the evil people is very odd to me.
Because again, we coexisted for a long time.
Well, I think after thinking about this and being on your show so often and talking to you about it, I think it's because certain people want to make us socialists and communists.
So they want to get us to hate our country.
They want to get us to hate a beautiful country, not perfect, but better than any other.
And gosh, I mean, it's like what my grandfather said to his Goombas.
If you don't like it, go back to Italy.
Go find someplace else.
Go ahead.
Isn't it amazing?
If this country is so bad, Rudy, why do two million people want to come in every year?
Why?
It's the best thing that human beings have going for them.
Exactly right.
Well, thanks.
We'll be on.
I'll be on your show when you pinch hit for Hannity.
Mr. Mayor, I appreciate your friendship.
Hey, show I'm on.
You come on.
You tell Hannity he's going to have a much bigger audience when you're on.
All the Italians are going to call!
You tell them that.
I'm not telling them that.
All the other Italians will call.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.
Happy Thanksgiving right back at you, Mr. Peyer.
Thank you.
I'm talking to my cousin, Kathy Giuliani, who's married to my first cousin, whose name is also Rudolph Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, actually.
And he's, how many years younger is Rudy than me?
About 10?
Yeah, about 10 or 12.
Yeah, 10 or 12.
He seems like he's about 30 years younger, but he's about 10 or 12 years younger.
And he and Kathy have two wonderful children.
And she has a Christmas party every year that I've been going to forever.
So she's a very, very family-oriented professional woman.
Very, very successful professional woman.
And I just wanted to ask, Kathy.
Kathy, how are you?
I'm good.
How are you, Rudy?
Very, very good.
This is a little different than my usual podcast, and I'm doing it because there are people who are trying to attack Thanksgiving.
And they want to take it away, like they want to take everything else away.
Pretty soon they'll take Christmas away.
And they're going to have a demonstration of Plymouth Rock against Thanksgiving.
And I thought it would be good if people learned the history of it and the family traditions and how people have melded it into an American holiday and also with their backgrounds.
So, Kathy, you grew up where?
In what part of the world?
I was born in Manhattan, and I lived there until I was seven years old, and until my parents bought a house in Queens, in Corona, Queens, and we moved when I was seven.
And your family background?
Ethnic?
Ethnic Greeks.
My parents actually came from Istanbul.
You know, they lived in... Constantinople.
Yeah.
I mean, they lived in what is really a Greek city, but Turkey claims it.
My father went to the Greek seminary there.
Isn't that where, isn't also that where the patriarch lives?
The head of the church?
Yep, yep.
And it's very tense as a result of that.
Very, very tense.
My parents came to this country in the 50s and, you know, they just, they loved this country and, you know, They embraced all its traditions and actually Thanksgiving was one of their favorite holidays.
Isn't that amazing?
So then, so tell me what a Thanksgiving was like in a Greek American, American Greek family.
Well, like I said, you know, you know, my mom actually thought it was like so wonderful that America had a holiday where they actually took out the time, you know, the whole day to like, you know, thank God for all its blessings.
And we, like, totally embraced it.
You know, we had turkey, like everybody else.
We love turkey.
And, you know, we had, like, you know, the traditional Thanksgiving.
My mother put her twist on it.
But, of course, there was always some Greek injected in there.
So, what kind of Greek food?
What kind of Greek food would she like?
And, you know, in my family, they would put lasagna.
They'd put some lasagna or ravioli or something like that.
Well, we had two types of stuffing.
There was one particular stuffing that my grandmother made.
It was like a recipe from her village in Albania where she was born.
But we always had, of course, the ubiquitous spinach pie.
You cannot have a Greek event without spinach pie.
And maybe instead of, we didn't do, we weren't big into mashed potatoes, but we had either lemon potatoes or rice.
And of course, you know, wonderful desserts.
My mom made me baklava.
Ah, you're making me hungry!
So, how big was the usual gathering?
Let's say, you know, when you were a teenager or a little before that.
Oh, I mean, we always invited families.
You know, my mother's sister came from, you know, they lived in Maine.
And they came to visit on Thanksgiving or, you know, my uncle Louie lived in Astoria and we'd either, you know, we would alternate homes, but it was always all the cousins.
And it was great.
So how did, maybe you can answer another question for me about New York history.
How did Astoria become so, I mean, like when, I should tell everyone when I ran for mayor the various times, three times, right?
Kathy and her husband and her whole family were enormously helpful.
They were among my most loyal, hardest, most effective workers.
How did Astoria become You would think Astoria is sort of the Greek capital in New York, kind of like the Greek center.
Would you say that's right?
Definitely.
I mean, most of my relatives and friends lived in Astoria.
I think, you know, it was probably because it was close to Manhattan.
Right.
And most of, you know, blue-collar workers, they were Greek-Americans.
They worked in Manhattan and it was convenient.
There was just one train ride away.
And it was the perfect place.
You still were able to have, like, the American dream, a home with a little backyard.
Yeah, their homes are very cute.
And, of course, a lot of great restaurants then developed.
Right now, it's one of the great places to go if you just want to get out of Manhattan and have great food.
But you ended up in Corona, which is a little further east.
Yeah, I'm not sure how that happened, but, you know, we lived in a two-family attached house.
It was great.
I went to all public schools.
And the Thanksgiving gathering would be family, it would be the regular Thanksgiving meal, and then Greek dishes surrounding it.
Definitely.
Definitely Greek dishes.
You know, somebody, I mean, like I said, spinach pie was a staple, but I'm sure there was pastitsio there.
You know, we got a little pasta in there.
Which is like Greek lasagna rooting in case.
Come on, you've made it for me.
I know what it is.
So then when you got married, so you married an Italian-American.
I always like it better if it's Greek-American.
I mean, American-Greek, American-Italian.
I like that better.
We should have done it that way from the beginning.
But in any event, you married an Italian-American.
How did you vary?
When you do Thanksgiving, what do you do?
My mother-in-law was a great cook.
You know, my mother-in-law, My uncle's name also was Rudy, I should tell everyone.
He was a great, great man, a great hero.
We all loved him so much.
But my uncle really refused to eat?
She was German-American.
And Viola.
Oh, my uncle's name also was Rudy, I should tell everyone.
He was a great, great man, a great hero.
We all loved him so much.
But he refused, my uncle really refused to eat?
Yeah, I think, you know, he actually lost his- She was German American.
And Viola, she was German American.
He would refuse to eat it, and she would throw it right in the garbage.
But eventually, she buckled down, and his sisters taught her how to cook.
So she cooked Italian... And she was a great Italian cook.
She got all the recipes.
And we always had... Once I got married, she really did Thanksgiving.
So you'd have Thanksgiving with her, and she would do the turkey, but some Italian dish beforehand.
Of course, of course.
She would do many.
And she would actually roll out the crepes where the cheese went in.
It was amazing.
And now, how about you?
What do I do next?
What do you do?
Yeah.
You know, I'm pretty American.
Although, you know, my daughter is bringing a spinach pie on Thanksgiving because she makes the spinach pie better than I do.
So we kept the spinach pie.
But, you know, we love Brussels sprouts.
We make these cauliflower frittatas.
Um, and yeah, I love stuffing.
There's just a little bit retained of the tradition.
Yes.
But when you have your Christmas party, there's a lot of Italian food.
Oh, yeah.
That's tradition.
I'm looking forward to it.
We have to do the antipasto for Christmas.
Well, you give my love to Rudy and the kids.
I'll see you right before Christmas.
Thank you, Rudy.
So nice seeing you.
Love.
Thank you.
Happy Thanksgiving.
So now I have the great pleasure of interviewing the great David Webb, star of radio, television.
This guy is unbelievable.
Great audience, unbelievable knowledge of history, unbelievable knowledge of current affairs, and courageous as you can't believe.
So I want to ask David about His Thanksgiving memories and how it all fit into his upbringing and his family, because we're trying to get a sense of how people deal with this wonderful, wonderful American holiday.
David, how are you?
I'm doing great, Rudy.
I mean, I love being on with you.
You know I love being on with you.
Let's bring a little common sense back to Thanksgiving.
I love this holiday.
Please, I love it too.
It is one of the great holidays because It's happy.
It's for everyone.
Even if you don't love turkey, maybe you love a ham.
Whatever it is, it's for you.
One of my great memories was a friend of the family's, Patty Page, who lived on Central Park West.
And you know where the parade would start, the New York Thanksgiving Day Parade.
You'd see the turkey lining up, the giant turkey, and it would work its way down to Midtown.
But what it was, was who was there?
Who was there was family.
All along the parade routes, people are out all around America.
People are out there prepping for this.
They're looking forward to being with the family.
The football games that are on that day, the rivalries, the conversation.
Warmer parts of the country, people are barbecuing.
And then one day, by the way, I learned about frying.
And I fried my first turkey ever.
You fried a turkey?
With one of the great legends in music, Sam Moore.
I was in charge.
Where did you do that, David?
Where?
Down in Florida.
I did it in Florida.
And I didn't blow up the turkey because I didn't drop a frozen turkey in there.
So how did it come out?
It came out great.
I got to tell you, everybody lived.
No turkeys were blown up.
So David, where did you grow up?
Tell everybody where you grew up.
I grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, right across from New York.
Right.
And the beauty of that was you have that whole culture in the Northeast, especially when it comes to Thanksgiving.
My family getting together, cousins, uncles, aunts, moving from house to house.
I got to ask everyone out there, think about it.
How many of you have had multiple meals on Thanksgiving day outside of breakfast and lunch?
Nevermind the leftovers and the turkey.
So you would go to different relatives' houses?
More than one?
Early Thanksgiving, mid-Thanksgiving, and then the late night Thanksgiving, Followed by permission to put on your sweatpants and fall asleep on the couch.
I loved it.
Every minute of it.
So David, that is a very interesting thing.
People always fall asleep on Thanksgiving.
Was it something in the turkey?
I've talked to many people about Thanksgiving, and I don't fall asleep that much after eating.
And you and I have been to dinner many, many times.
We don't fall asleep.
We actually have cigars and talk until the middle of the night, right?
You know what I think it is?
What happens on Thanksgiving?
There's something about being with a larger group, which typically happens on Thanksgiving, A lot of talk, a lot of energy, a lot of relaxation, right?
You're feeling good.
The doctors would tell us we're happy.
We're releasing all those happy, you know, endorphins into our system.
There's something about that.
I think we get really comfortable, Rudy.
I think, you know, you and I, and we'll sit around and we'll have long conversations, but what do we do when we're relaxing at the same time?
I think the turkey is frankly how much you eat.
And I'm not going to claim that I don't eat a lot.
You don't eat a lot of turkey?
No, no.
I eat a lot of everything.
I got the turkey, I got the cranberry stuffing, I got the stuffing in the bird, out of the bird.
Yeah, but do you like the leg?
You like the turkey leg?
Oh, come on.
My dad and I, that was the way to go.
A lot of people don't.
A lot of people don't.
I don't know why.
I mean, I've been to Thanksgiving, you know, when I was young with my family all the time, but since I've lived a long time.
I've been to a lot of different Thanksgiving things.
And it was always easy to get the turkey leg because nobody wanted it.
Not in my house.
In my house, it was one, two.
You know, remember, was it Pat Summerall?
And the guys who had the turkey with the six legs.
For anyone old enough to remember that one like you and me, right?
The NFL turkey with six legs.
That's the turkey we need.
So what's your earliest Thanksgiving memory?
My earliest, my grandparents.
And I remember my grandparents who grew up, who lived in the Kingsbury section of the Bronx.
Going up there for Thanksgiving in their apartment and there were probably, I don't know, 15, 20, the kids, the kids table.
I was sitting at the kids table.
And it was always led by first, you got to say a prayer, right?
So my grandfather would lead that.
My grandmother would make sure we all stayed in line and then she'd cover for us because kids with that much energy, we're going to get into a little bit of trouble.
So she, Go on over to the other room where you don't get in too much trouble.
And then everybody get wild.
And then as he got older, so now, now you, now you, you live in, now you live in Florida most of the time, right?
So how is it different?
So you have the tradition of the North, New Jersey, New York.
How, how is it different in Florida?
I think Florida is closer to Texas.
When I was in Texas for those years, that's where you really heard about fried turkey, smoked turkey.
All the others.
So now you have turkey in three forms in Florida.
You get the baked turkey.
You typically get a smoked and you get a fried.
Maybe it's something with the warm weather.
They want to put a fryer outside and fire it up more than they do in the Northeast.
But you know what I miss, Rudy?
The fresh turkey that the hunters go out and get.
Did you have those?
I rarely have had one of those.
Maybe once, twice.
When I was living for a while in Southampton, around this time of year, these big fat turkeys are walking all over the place.
And I just wanted to go get one.
And, but, you know, they said it would take forever to, to cure it and, and make it edible.
But, but if you do, it's fabulous.
A wild turkey is fabulous.
Is that true?
Yeah, it is.
I've had friends who've done it over the years and I've tried it.
It's awesome.
And it makes great leftovers because it's so tender.
They brine it.
I mean, I sound like a chef because I'm a wannabe chef.
That's what it comes down to.
So what do you do now with your beautiful bride?
Do you make it?
How do you do the Thanksgiving now?
Look, I'm not going to ruin a perfect plan.
My mother's doing the bird.
She does the best Thanksgiving turkey, no matter what.
I know we all say that about our moms.
No, of course not.
But man, her turkey's great.
So what does she do?
She bakes the turkey and her turkey comes out.
She preps it about five days out or so, lets it really take the flavor.
She makes this fresh cranberry sausage stuffing that goes in the bird.
Her own recipe.
Fresh cranberries.
I mean, that thing comes out and then you add the apple pie.
By the way, I get to peel the apples.
So you don't like being a kid again.
So when do you do that?
The night before?
I'll be peeling apples the morning of.
This will be fresh baked apple pie that comes out right out of the oven and into my mouth.
Just for the record.
How do you fit the football in to the, how do you, how do you get the foot?
There's always a little thing with the women and the men and the getting, getting the football game in.
How do you do that?
Kind of like what my mother used to do with my father.
And I, after everything was done, she'd kick us out of the kitchen and kick us out of picking at the leftovers and the bones.
Because she knew we'd want to go watch the football game, so she takes us down to the rec room.
Do you remember when it used to always be the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions?
Now the Lions are on, but the Packers have gone off.
I'm pretty sure there was a time that every Thanksgiving, before the Dallas Cowboys got into it and everybody else, now they have three games.
But it used to be the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers.
Yep, that was a great game.
Yeah, and that was all the way back in the old, you know, Lombardi, even before Lombardi, but the Lombardi era, when the Packers were, before Lombardi, when he was terrible.
But, I mean, football is a big, is a big part of it.
Yeah, it is, and you know what, I get it, it expanded, but it's the love of the game, because it's the American part of it.
And I gotta tell you, the NFL should take a lesson from that.
Look at what America binds to holidays, a happy holiday and a great game.
Yeah, please.
I mean, to want to do any damage to this holiday is sacrilegious, right?
Un-American.
This is the best holiday.
Look, I love Christmas.
I love all of these other days.
But Thanksgiving, it's just a happy holiday.
So where are you going to spend it?
At my mother's house, again, back to that turkey, although I will be there early in the morning peeling apples in New Jersey.
In New Jersey!
Wonderful!
Come back to the Northeast.
Oh yeah.
Beautiful.
That's the place to have it, in New Jersey.
One of the original colonies.
Come on.
And I hope to see you over the weekend, okay?
You have it, my friend.
I'll tell you what.
If you got one of those six turkey, can you put one in your pocket and bring it?
One of those six turkey?
I don't mind it cold.
I don't mind it cold.
I can have it two days later, three days later.
I can have it cold.
You don't have to heat it up.
Anytime you give me a drumstick.
Oh, yeah.
It's the best part.
Happy Thanksgiving, my good friend.
Hey, by the way, you're doing terrific.
Thank you.
You too.
If you watch on Fox, boy, you are a star.
Fabulous.
I learn from the best.
See you this weekend.
God bless you.
So when we have a Thanksgiving dinner this year, let's thank God that we're here.
That God put us here.
One way or another, right?
It's His plan that we were born here.
It's His plan that we came here.
It's His plan that we are stewards of the greatest experiment in democracy and freedom and dignity of the human being in the history of mankind.
This is it, with all of it false.
That can be proven in a hundred different ways.
We won't do that right now.
I just ask you when you sit down for your Thanksgiving dinner and you have your turkey, 90% of us do, right?
Or whatever else you're going to have.
You remember back to what those pilgrims had to endure.
The 66 days on a ship that I don't think any of us could be on now.
Losing half their people and all their women.
At that first Thanksgiving feast, there were only four women.
It's like four women, 22 men, and 25 children.
And 60.
And 60 natives.
Who became their brothers and their friends and their sisters.
Remember their courage.
Because that's what America is about.
Not what happened 50 years later when the more rich people and the arrogant people and the people trying to play both sides took over and ruined it for a while.
It's always going to happen.
But it got re-established.
It got re-established enough so that those of us who look at America from afar have a better perspective on it than some who criticize it from within.
They want to come here.
By the hundreds, by the thousands, by the millions.
No place else on earth they vote for the way they vote for us.
You know what that makes us?
Fortunate.
It makes us very fortunate that we're Americans, that we're here in America, either born, naturalized, or hoping to become citizens.
And we just say, thank you, God.
Of all the things you could have done with us and all the things you could have given us, you gave us one of the greatest gifts you can give anyone, the United States of America.
And that's what they say thanksgiving for.
Because in the history of this nation, there's no other nation with a good, has overwhelmed the evil and the bad and corrected it, like this country, and it will continue to do that.
So, have a happy Thanksgiving.
Say a prayer before your great meal, and then enjoy it.
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