CARLTON FLETCHER: Are we in the final generation of home cooking?

“There was ham and there was turkey, there was caviar, and long, tall glasses with wine up to here.”

— Leo Sayer

We all have our Thanksgiving memories.

It may not have been over the river and through the woods, but most of us can think back on the fun — OK, and sometimes not so fun … more forced — times we had visiting relatives during the holiday break from school and work to celebrate Thanksgiving. Think Robert Earl Keen’s “Merry Christmas from the Family” a few weeks earlier.

As we get older, we usually figure out that Thanksgiving is a time to “reflect on all the things we have to be thankful for in our lives.” (God forbid you put those words down in a column, lest you be criticized for not being as talented as some other writer, as if that latter writer had some kind of monopoly on the concept.) We know the story — or at least the one that’s been sanitized and presented to us as kids in school; it turns out the “Kumbaya” sit-down featuring the pilgrims and Indians may not have been quite as civilized as we were told — of how Thanksgiving came about. But we also are bright enough to figure out early on what Thanksgiving is really about.

Food.

Yeah, I know, that’s a callous and selfish way to look at the holiday, but is there anyone who would dispute the claim? Weigh the Thanksgiving ads or displays about turkey and dressing, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin or pecan pie against the ones that focus on thankfulness, and you’ll see the scales tip heavily in favor of the former.

So I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that there appears to be — at least in southwest Georgia — an alarming tendency — during Thanksgiving specifically and pretty much all the rest of the days in general — to eschew cooking these planned-out-so-that-everyone’s-favorite-is-included meals in favor of dining out.

I was surprised Thursday by the number of people — families, couples and individuals — who chose to eat at one of the few restaurants that were open during the holiday rather than cook the traditional holiday meal. I talked to a few of them, and the reasoning they offered was, not surprisingly, pretty much the same: “It’s a whole lot easier having someone else do the cooking …” “Someone else cleans up after you when you eat out …” “You don’t have to go from store to store, shopping for all the favorite items that everybody wants during a big meal …” “There’s no fighting over the drumsticks; everyone can get their own!”

Thanksgiving aside, I’m amazed at the number of people who dine out not just on special occasions but virtually every day in this mecca of fast-food and chain restaurants. Ride by some of the more popular fast-food chains with drive-thrus any given day starting at around 11 a.m. More often than not, the line of cars is daunting, frequently spilling out of establishments’ allocated space into busy thoroughfares. (I often find myself thinking: Damn, are the chicken sandwiches at these places really so good that you’d burn up half a tank of $3.35-a-gallon gas just to get one?)

I get it that most families don’t have stay-at-home moms or dads who prepare meals for the family every day, but surely there are some enterprising individuals who manage to get away from work or school in time to prepare a meal or two during the week.

And while it’s not my place to talk about the nutritional value of much fast food, I’m also amazed at the number of local sit-down restaurants that usually have wait times unless you show up well before the 11:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. crushes of diners, many of whom know they’ll be pushing the time limit on their lunch hour yet can’t understand why the people in the restaurant don’t get how important it is to the future of the world that they get their meal and get out in time to get back to work.

I guess the brown-bag lunch is another thing that’s gone the way of the dinosaur.

Here’s one of my greatest fears: At some point in the near future — maybe a couple of generations down the road — when a daughter or son asks her or his mom or dad for a favorite recipe, the parent will say, “Drive three blocks to (local restaurant), order from the menu …”