Every year, I get a bunch of calendars printed for family and a group of friends. It’s a basic wall calendar with photos taken around the ranch. This year’s has a fun shot of the Northern Lights, along with the pictures of wildlife, tractors, snow and the hay crop that didn’t make it. And m ore tractors.  It also has the essential feast days and observances noted. Holidays like Potgut Tuesday, when we celebrate the potguts coming out of hibernation in the spring.   The return of the redwing blackbirds is a holy day around here. If you’ve made it that far through winter in Woodland without resorting to cannibalism, the song of the redwing blackbirds is blessed reassurance that you will last until spring finally arrives. There is a collective sigh of relief when they return. It’s a pretty limited print run with an odd following. It’s mostly family (there’s 45 or so for the annual Christmas party in the old dairy barn). I give them to a few friends who politely accept them. Strangely, a group of my niece’s friends scattered from Minnesota to Key West all put in pre-orders. A couple of them actually fly in every year to help mend the fences in the May mud.  I am still surprised to learn that Heated Tractor Cab Appreciation Day is not generally celebrated across the country. Heathens. In 1929, a Japanese aviation pioneer crashed his plane into Soapstone Mountain on the Fourth of July. Family lore says that my great uncle Lin was among the first to discover the fatal wreck. He would have been in the area herding sheep.  The wreckage of the plane ended up in my grandfather’s barn for a while, and my father remembered sitting in it, in a dark barn, trying to imagine flight. The barn was roughly where the deli counter of the new Smith’s store in Heber is. The Marriott library at the U had a photo of the crash, so that got added to this year’s calendar. There are a lot of empty date boxes where months start on a Friday or end on a Sunday, so there is some unused real estate there.  I stumbled on to an old newspaper ad for a performance by Tex Ross and his Rhythm Wranglers at Kamp Kill Kare. It was a one-night stand for the annual Deer Hunters Ball. Ross was a Park City guy and a fairly successful recording artist in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  Kill Kare was a hot spot back in the day. It was only a couple of miles down the canyon from the ranch. The owner went nuts one night and shot the place up. The sheriff recruited my uncle to talk the guy down before anybody got killed. Everybody in the valley has their own Kill Kare story. I followed Tex Ross and the Rhythm Wranglers down a lot of rabbit holes. Hoyt’s Store in Kamas was both the grocery and hardware store when I was a kid. They also sold Massy-Harris farm machinery in the early 1950s. If it you wanted to bake oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, the Hoyt brothers could set you up with sugar, nuts, chips and a new Massy-Harris combine to harvest your own oats.  Other local businesses that were part of life — Simpson Drug, now High Mountain Drug — did some advertising. The old ads filled the spaces on the calendar and flooded memories in all directions. My great-grandfather, Gottfried Buehler, owned a general store in Midway, and I found an ad announcing that he had a full line of “men’s shoes, boots and rubbers” in stock for the holidays. I’m guessing that “rubbers” meant something entirely different in 1903. The people and places, the businesses and random events that came before all shape the present. It’s hard to look at all of that and not be deeply thankful for the heritage and sense of place.  I’ve known multiple generations at some of these local businesses. They’ve made my business possible, from electricians to excavators, beaver trappers to internet providers.  The family roots go back to the first settlement of Heber on Dad’s side. A lot of backbreaking work over a lot of generations got me here. It’s not just the arts and culture presented at the Kamp Kill Kare concert scene. Every day, there are people working at businesses and suppliers and service companies that make life so easy. The guys from Rocky Mountain Power who are climbing poles in all kinds of weather, my propane guy — whose name is Guy — worries about my pipes freezing more than I do. He refuses to retire because he doesn’t trust the replacements to keep “his” tanks full.    Eventually ski season will get going, thanks to a lot of work from people we don’t often see, like lift mechanics, snow makers and groomers.  This is a community of embarrassing abundance. But there are also a lot of people who make it all happen who are on the edge. This holiday season, please give what you can to organizations that fill in the gaps and give a needed hand up to the people we mostly don’t know but couldn’t live without.  There are some great organizations doing great things here. Give generously. Happy Thanksgiving. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. The post More Dogs on Main: Happy Thanksgiving appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less