Giving Thanks: I'll Have Pastrami on Rye at Katz's Delicatessen

My father worked in retailing -- "the Jewish Army," I call it, because we bounced around so often.

Family traditions? Packing and moving.

Geographically, my mother, my brother and I form an equilateral triangle. My wife and her siblings were orphaned young and are now far-flung.

Family get-togethers? Not happening.

So Thanksgiving is, for us, the equivalent of a Snow Day -- a blank in the calendar we can fill any way we like.

When the kid showed up, we made a slight effort to forge some Thanksgiving traditions.

Some years, we -- and busloads of Hassids from Brooklyn -- took refuge under the tent of the Big Apple Circus.

More recently, we've spent Thanksgiving in the indoor pools of upstate New York resorts.

This year, we're staying in town and actually sitting down to a meal together.

And such a meal! A Reuben for my wife. Hot pastrami and a golden ribbon of mustard on seeded rye for me. For our daughter, a lycopene addict, we'll bring a bottle of Heinz Organic Ketchup to pour over her French fries. And -- "for the table" -- slaw and potato salad and pickles of intense sourness. All washed down with Dr. Brown's Diet Cream soda.

Where? Katz's Deli. Where else?

Yes, we're going to the Lower East Side. Not only because it's where my people made their first assault on America. ("You want a blue suit? Hymie, turn on the blue light!") Even more, because a no-frills meal, simply prepared and simply served, suggests our gratitude for the essential things.

So we'll drive downtown along the boatless river and park on deserted Houston Street. We'll stand in the shortest line of Katz's year. We'll happily accept samples of glistening pastrami and shove a dollar into the sandwich maker's tip cup.

And then -- as close to the "Send a salami to your boy in the Army" sign as we can find a table -- we'll intake a thousand calories.

Let no one call us un-American.

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